Markéta Hánová is the head of the Collection of Asian Art, National
Gallery in Prague.
Yuka Kadoi is Elise Richter Fellow (V-995) at the Department of Art
History, University of Vienna.
Simone Wille is Elise Richter Fellow (V880-G) at the Department of
Art History, University of Innsbruck.

Markéta Hánová
Cultural Politics & Transregional Networks Yuka
Kadoi
Simone Wille (EDS)in Twentieth-Century Central Europe

Collecting Asian Art locates Asian art across the twentieth-century
in Central Europe via discourse and ideology, and discusses key
collections and the way individual collectors built their networks.
It thus explores transregional connections that developed throughcollecting activities and strategies in the prewar, interwar and postwar
eras. Contributors also examine the personal connections between agroup of Indologists from postwar Prague and modernist Indian artists
from the early 1950s to the 1980s and also discuss the systematicarchiving of East Asian art collections in Slovenia. A concluding
conversation looks at colonisation and decolonisation from a broader
perspective by approaching it through recent art historical discussions on the global dimensions of modernism. By defining the region
through its external relationships and its entanglements with regions
across Asia rather than as a self-contained unit, the contributions inthis volume outline how these transregional connections and networks evolved and changed over time, thus highlighting their singularity in comparison to developments in Western Europe. Based onrecent research, Collecting Asian Art reveals neglected sources while
reinterpreting well-known ones.

Collecting Asian Art

Rather than centering on the well-known collections in Western
European and North American museums, Collecting Asian Art turns
to museum collections of Asian art in Central Europe which emerged
from the late 19th century onwards. Highlighting the dimensions ofCentral European connectedness, this volume explores how thesecollections evolved and changed under changing cultural and politicalconditions from the pre-World War I to the post-World War II periods.
With a primary focus on collections of East Asian, South Asian, andWest Asian art in Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Warsaw, Kraków, Budapest,
and Ljubljana, it outlines the transregional connections and networks
that gradually developed.

Collecting
AsianCultural Politics
Art &Networks
Transregionalin
Markéta Hánová
Yuka Kadoi
Simone Wille (EDS)

Twentieth-Century
Central Europe

COLLECTING ASIAN ART:CULTURAL POLITICS AND TRANSREGIONAL NETWORKSIN TWENTIETH-CENTURY CENTRAL EUROPE

COLLECTINGASIAN
CULTURAL POLITICS
ART AND TRANSREGIONALEDITED BY MARKÉTA HÁNOVÁ,YUKA KADOI, AND SIMONE WILLENETWORKS IN
TWENTIETH-CENTURYCENTRAL EUROPE

Leuven University Press

A collection of selected papers given to the conference “Collecting Asian Art inPrague: Cultural Politics and Transcontinental Networks in 20th Century Central
Europe”, organised by the National Gallery in Prague (NGP) and the Austrian S­ cience
Fund (FWF) research project (P29536-G26) at the NGP from 17-18 June 2021.
This work was published with the support of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF):[PUB 1021-P], and the KU Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access.

Published in 2024 by Leuven University Press / Presses Universitaires de Louvain /Universitaire Pers Leuven. Minderbroedersstraat 4, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium).
Selection and editorial matter © Markéta Hánová, Yuka Kadoi, and Simone Wille, 2024
Individual chapters © The respective authors, 2024
Every effort has been made to contact all holders of the copyright to the visual material
contained in this publication. Unless otherwise stated, image data were provided by
the copyright holder indicated in the caption. Any copyrightholders who believe that
illustrations have been reproduced without their knowledge are asked to contact the
publisher.
This book is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 License:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Attribution should include the following information:
Markéta Hánová, Yuka Kadoi, and Simone Wille (eds.), Collecting Asian Art: Cultural
Politics and Transregional Networks in Twentieth-Century Central Europe. Leuven: Leuven
University Press, 2024. (CC BY 4.0)
Unless otherwise indicated all images are reproduced with the permission of therightsholders acknowledged in captions and are expressly excluded from the CC BY 4.0
license covering the rest of this publication. Permission for reuse should be sought from therights-holder.
ISBN 978 94 6270 378 0 (Paperback)ISBN 978 94 6166 540 9 (ePDF)
https://doi.org/10.11116/9789461665409
D/2024/1869/3
NUR: 654
Layout: Crius Group
Cover design: Jason Anscomb
Cover illustration: V. S. Gaitonde, Evening, tempera on paper, 56 x 43 cm, National Gallery
in Prague, inv. No. Vm 926 Photograph © National Gallery in Prague 2023.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Note on Transliteration and Translation

7

Collecting Asian Art: Central Europe’s Transregional Connectivity
Simone Wille

9

THE LOCATION OF ASIAN ART IN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY CENTRAL EUROPE
The Ideals of the East: Asian Art and the Crisis of Visual Expression
across the Globe, ca. 1900 31
Yuka Kadoi
Picasso’s Meeting with BuddhaTomáš Winter45

COLLECTIONS AND COLLECTORS, NETWORKS AND DISPLAY
Twentieth-Century Cultural Politics and Networks: The Genesis of the
Asian Art Collection at the National Gallery in Prague 61
Markéta Hánová‘I Have Shown You Japan …’Feliks Jasieński and Japanese Art Collections
in Poland
Agnieszka Kluczewska-Wójcik
Networks of Enthusiasm for Japan
Johannes Wieninger

83
97

SPOTLIGHT ON (COMMUNIST) ASIA
When East and West met in the Heart of Europe: Vojtěch Chytil and His
Contribution to Collecting Asian Art in Central Europe 113
Michaela Pejčochová
Table of Contents

5

Big Presents Maintain the Friendship: The Gift of the People’s Republic ofChina to the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (National Museums in Berlin),
GDR, in 1959 
Uta Rahman-Steinert
Saved from the Furnace, thrown into the Cold War: Islamic Art in
Hungary in the 1950s
Iván Szántó

127

141

SOUTH ASIA IN POST-WAR PRAGUE
Lubor Hájek and Indian Modernist Art 159
Zdenka Klimtová
M. F. Husain’s Work in the Collection of the National Gallery in Prague:Connecting East and West 171
Simone Wille

THE ARCHIVE: A REPOSITORY
Collecting East Asian Objects in Slovenia: A Methodological Approach
to Creating the VAZ Database 189
Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik

COLLECTING ASIAN ART: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
Of Centres, Peripheries, Values, and Judgements
Simone Wille in Conversation with Partha Mitter on ‘Decentering
Modernism’ and Modernist Routes beyond Western Europe

205

Biographies of the Authors

217

Index

221

Gallery with Colour Plates

239

6

COLLECTING ASIAN ARTNOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION
Owing to the transregional and multi-linguistic coverage of this volume, stretching from Japan to the Czech lands, names and terms have been transliterated
according to the their generally accepted, Anglicised usage. All quotes have beentranslated by the authors, unless otherwise noted. Apart from specific cases, original Chinese and Japanese characters, as well as the Arabic script, have not beenused throughout the volume. Finally, both the editors and authors have madetheir best efforts to minimise stylistic variations throughout the volume, while
each contributor has been encouraged to observe stylistic consistency within his/her own chapter.

Note on Transliteration and Translation

7

COLLECTING ASIAN ART: CENTRAL EUROPE’S
TRANSREGIONAL CONNECTIVITY
Simone Wille

Examining collections of Asian art across Europe allows for research on multiple levels and for a series of narratives to unfold. For example, one can retrace
how European merchants have imported luxury goods via overland and maritime
trade routes since medieval times.1 Alternatively, it is possible to look at the mechanisms by which Asian portable objects and paintings were moved and tradedalong colonial routes to Europe, where such items usually arrived both at imperial
metropolises and at other capital cities, from whence they were distributed acrossEurope and even to North America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.2 This is how a number of miscellaneous goods originating in Asia, both
luxurious and utilitarian, found their way into private and state art collections inCentral Europe during the interwar period, and this phenomenon reflects how thecolonial dimension affected the emergence of nation states and their museum collections in this region. These trade mechanisms also show how closely these countries’ economies and nationalisms were intertwined with the global condition.3
Collections of Asian art in European museums can further narrate personaland official encounters between protagonists from both continents, thereby placing agency at the heart of the discussion.4 The study of collections has often beenconnected with the lives of individual collectors, and the complexity of humaninteraction reveals that the personal aspects involved in these processes often
stretch beyond questions of power and authority. What collections of Asian art
also illustrate is the transfer not only of art but also of knowledge. Moreover, they
inform us about the curiosity and possibility of contact and exchange with what
is lesser known.5 In these collections art can therefore be seen as the very material
through which transfer and exchange became manifest. Collections of Asian art
thus provide points of departure for a spectrum of narratives to unfold.
By taking into consideration museum collections of Asian art in the regionof Central Europe, rather than the well-known collections in Western European
and North American museums,6 this volume explores the dimensions of Central
European connectedness across past and present political and cultural boundCollecting Asian Art: Central Europe’s Transregional Connectivity

9

aries, with an approach that considers entangled history, the examination of
encounters, and the study of cultural exchange and transfer under the changing
cultural and political conditions from the pre-First World War to the post-Second
World War period. The fact that this puts Central Europe’s connection with Asiaand the East in the centre of the discussion is significant and, when examinedwithin collections of Asian art, can contribute to an understanding of the region
that, in its own sense, sought to be globally connected.7 This volume thus examines collections of Asian art in Central Europe, as developed since the late nineteenth century and as perceived through the study of transregional connections.
A transregional approach allows us to overcome the limited image of the region
by making connections with a seemingly disconnected world.8 Furthermore, thetransregional connections that are discussed through the activities and initiativesof collecting Asian art can be seen as processes that contributed to defining theregion as distinct, thus enabling an investigation of the role that the collectedmaterial played in questions concerning not only aesthetics of modernity but
also the entangled histories of art objects in museums.9 Here, the transregional
approach allows for an outward-looking perspective, one that opens the region
to the world. Looking at the region not as a self-contained unit but defining it
through its external relationships and its different entanglements, the contributions in this volume sketch out how these connections and entanglements developed and changed over time.
In their development from the late nineteenth century to the late twentiethcentury, collections of Asian art in Central Europe are characterised by a striving
for self-representation, both national and cultural, and therefore permit an investigation of the connection with political sovereignty and a nation-centred formation of identity. Rather than viewing collections of Asian art in Central Europe
solely as the efforts and achievements of individual nations, they are consideredhere as a regional feature that stands out as distinct from Western European collections, especially in the way that they developed or progressed in the period
after the Second World War. As a result, the image of this region as an isolated
cultural landscape – which is particularly persistent in relation to the Cold War
period – is replaced through the study of connections that transcend the region,
thereby allowing us to critically engage with ‘global art’, a new field of criticalinquiries that emerged in the late 2000s.10 What constitutes ‘global’ in art has been
intensively debated since the wake of the ‘global turn’ in the early 2010s, yet thisdebate has so far been predominantly led by Western art historians.11 Although
non-Western art historians have increasingly engaged with this debate, the question of ‘globality’ has provoked lively discussion among modernists and contemporary cultural theorists, who have swiftly responded to the ‘global turn’, perhaps
more enthusiastically than classicists, medievalists, and early modern experts.12
Although our geographical focus centres on ‘Central Europe’, we consider thisregion as an extended space encompassing East, Central, and South-East Europe,
regional and subregional spaces which have, until recently, often been neglected10

Simone Willein the context of global dynamics. However, there is an increase in scholarshipwith a focus on East Central Europe and their transregional connectivity, thereby
making connections with global developments. Most of these efforts and research
projects tend to be located in the field of historical research.13 This subject began
to be incorporated into the field of visual studies around 2010, thanks to pioneering efforts initiated by the late Piotr Piotrowski.14 Within the subregion of Central
Europe, we thus focus on collections of Asian art in Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Warsaw, Cracow, Budapest, and Ljubljana, where we have identified commonalities,
both in the collecting strategies and in the shifts of cultural and political strategies.
This reflects our understanding of the region of Central Europe as at the heart ofEuropean culture, without fixed geographical boundaries, but ethnically mixed
and historically conditioned by Germanic, modern Slavic, and Gaelic cultures,
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the former Habsburg Empire, of
which Austria-Hungary and its capital, Vienna, was the heart. Our understanding and definition is therefore closely related to that of Matthew Rampley in his
introduction to the new online journal Art East/Central, published at the Facultyof Arts of Masaryk University in Brno15, but given the scope of our engagementwith Asian art, it is important for us to foreground the interconnectedness of theregion of Central Europe with Asia.
It is therefore important to note that the late nineteenth century was marked
by a euphoria for Asian art, with an early focus on East Asia in general andJapan in particular. Following the emergence of collections of Asian art in Central Europe from the late nineteenth century onwards, this thereby guided ourattention to regions and countries in Asia which, apart from Japan, are primarily
China, North Korea, South Asia, and India, respectively. This is not to say that
there is no object from other regions and countries from across Asia to be identified in collections of Asian art in Central Europe. Quite the contrary, in fact:
the many collections of Asian art that are located in Central European museums
cover the vast region of Asia – spanning East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia,
Central Asia, and West Asia – and can be attributed to collecting activities thatdate as far back as the sixteenth century. However, according to our observations
and to narrate the shifting regimes of value since the late nineteenth century, ourfocus has primarily remained on East, South and West Asia, as this has allowed
us to identify common and often connected mechanisms of collection strategies
and presentations. Our observations have further revealed that the developmentof transregional dynamics and challenges, which led to entanglements and connections between regions in Asia and in Central Europe, from the late nineteenth
century until the end of the Cold War, differs greatly from developments in Western Europe. In relation to collections of Asian art, this becomes particularly clear
in the period during the Cold War. Collections such as those in Prague, East Berlin, and Budapest show how closely their activities were linked to the official cultural politics of their governments. Their common orientation towards ‘friendly’
and non-aligned nations in Asia is ultimately a sign of the general orientation ofCollecting Asian Art: Central Europe’s Transregional Connectivity

11

countries tied to the Soviet Union. Vienna, as a Central European metropolis at
the gateway to the Eastern Bloc, is a case in point. While it proved instrumental
and stimulating for the emerging collections in the neighbouring Central European metropolises, especially in their formative phase in the interwar period,
the Austrian capital was unable to reconnect with its earlier collecting activities
after the Second World War.16 Here, it seems that the neighbouring countries andformer Crown lands became much more active in establishing transregional connections with Asian countries. There the continued development of collections ofAsian art was enthusiastically supported by governments, albeit with intentions
that differed from those of the interwar years in that they were mainly politicallymotivated. This has proved to be a distinctive feature of the collections of Asianart in Central Europe, which is why selected contributions in this volume are
devoted to this development.
Focusing on the transregional connectivity of Central Europe, as this volume
aims to do, can also bring to the discussion the crisis of representation which set
in globally from the late nineteenth century onwards. The orientation towards
Asia in terms of its material and artistic culture provided stimulus and impetus,
and primarily ensured a renewal of the Western creative industry. Collectionsof Asian art were put on display for the purpose of studying form and style andto invigorate the creative industry. Moreover, stylistic, formal, and ideologicalfeatures of Asian art stimulated and encouraged modernist art and the avantgarde in its undertaking to challenge academic naturalism and classical norms oftaste.17 Like African and Oceanic art, Asian artefacts and aesthetics, accompanied
by Eastern ideas, can be said to have been instrumental and influential in enabling new artistic movements in the West.18 Asian art contributed significantly
to the transformation of the conception of beauty and aesthetics in the Westernworld. Modernism’s transcultural past is thus defined by aesthetic translations,and the success of Asian art across Europe succeeded in changing the Eurocentric narrative of a great Greco-Roman past as the centre of civilisation.19 In theregion of Central Europe, art historical engagement with Asia traditionally harks
back to German Morgenländische Forschung, which can collectively be grouped
as those scholars who dedicated their study to ‘Oriental’ art, encompassing areas
stretching from Asia Minor to Japan. Their activities are influenced by positivist
collecting and documenting work, to which Suzanne L. Marchand refers in detailin her study on German Orientalism.20 It was in this milieu that art historians
argued over the importance of either the Orient or Rome21 in what became, inart historian Josef Strzygowski’s case, a comparative approach. Alois Riegl, Strzygowski’s teacher, had already emphasised the importance of ignored Hellenistic
forms which involved rethinking, as Marchand aptly puts it, ‘the Orient’s creative
impact on Western culture’.22
This volume has grown out of the international conference Collecting Asian Art
in Prague: Cultural Politics and Transcontinental Networks in Twentieth-Century
Central Europe, a hybrid meeting that was held in Prague in June 2021.23 The con12

Simone Willeference was organised by Markéta Hánová and Zdenka Klimtová, from the Collection of Asian Art at the National Gallery in Prague (NGP); Simone Wille, who used
the occasion to conclude her five-year research project Patterns of Trans-regional
Trails,24 in which she closely collaborated with the NGP; and Yuka Kadoi, whose
own research project and expertise complemented and enriched the Prague project.25 As a team, they each have expertise with art from different areas in Asiaand have long been studying the often dynamic engagement and connectedness
that these Asian subregions have with Central Europe. Thus, the idea to collectively discuss these dynamics by adopting a transregional angle was perceived as achance to contribute to a move to overcome nation-centred art histories. Furthermore, by viewing the Central European nations’ collecting dynamics as a larger
initiative over a longer period of time, the team acknowledges the importance ofan art history of connections, thereby connecting with Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s
proposition of ‘connected histories’, rather than global history.26 While the editors
are interested in highlighting commonalities in collecting strategies in the Central
European region, they also emphasise the regional singularity of the transregional
interconnectedness that characterises this region in its connection to regions in
Asia. Finally, all of us have also been trained from the outset as non-European art
historians, so our volume includes fundamental Asian perspectives, rather than the
narrow framework of collecting and art market studies in Central Europe.

THE LOCATION OF ASIAN ART IN CENTRAL EUROPE IN THE EARLYTWENTIETH CENTURY
The organisation of this volume is thematic, but there is also an underlying unityof purpose, which, we hope, will help readers navigate it from essay to essay. The
first section is dedicated to locating Asian art in early twentieth-century Central Europe via discourse and ideology, which is closely linked to discussions ofAsian art and the crisis of representation occurring in the late nineteenth century.
Yuka Kadoi sets out to explore the journey across regions of the famous Japanese
art ideologue Kakuzo Okakura (also known as Okakura Tenshin; 1863–1913)
in order to connect with his influential art historical text The Ideals of the East:
With Special Reference to the Art of Japan, which addresses the crisis of pictorial
representation in any visual culture at the turn of the twentieth century. Shifting
Euro-centric perspectives on the rise of modernity around 1900, Kadoi begins
with a late nineteenth-century universal map, where Japan is centrally located on
the flat cartographic representation of the world, referring to the country’s imaginative geographical self-positioning, much in the way that Edward Said used it in
his critique of Orientalism, where imagined geographies refer to the perceptionof a space created by certain images, texts, or discourses. The discourse in Japan at
this transitional time after the Meiji Restoration was carried by both Western andEastern orientation, and Okakura, as Kadoi demonstrates, was at the forefrontCollecting Asian Art: Central Europe’s Transregional Connectivity

13

of this ‘ambiguous’ situation. Okakura thus became one of the key initiators of
the short-lived pan-Asian movement, in which he propounded the myth of ‘One
Asia’, which can be linked to Western stereotypes of the Orient.27 When Okakurasought to establish alternative artistic expressions, thus challenging Western andcolonial aesthetics, he had already toured across Europe in desperate search ofartistic originality. Contrary to his expectations, artistic circles in Europe in general, and fin de siècle Central Europe in particular, were steeped in Japonismeand thus left him disillusioned as to finding the origins of Western art. Kadoi thus
positions his subsequent publication project, The Ideals of the East, at the crossroads of the crisis of representation that affected not only the West but also theEast. Okakura’s understanding of Western art, which included Central Europe,
potentially opens up the region to the discourse and ideology of pan-Asianism.
Representational strategies and discourses are also at the heart of what concerns Tomáš Winter’s article. He takes us back to the early 1910s, when the Groupof Fine Artists (Skupina výtvarných umělců) in Prague organised a series of three
exhibitions, each carefully curated by its members in an attempt to display theirstylistic and formal concerns in response to avant-garde movements in France andGermany. In true avant-garde spirit, they experimented with different aesthetic
expressions in order to challenge tradition and to make a central contribution tomodernism as an aesthetic discourse. The group was composed of artists, architects, caricaturists, and historians, which is reflected in the character of the three
exhibitions. The first exhibition in January 1912 framed the painters’ works, whichwere formally oriented towards Cubist vocabulary, with a specially conceived
exhibition architecture and an interior design that complemented the paintings
with furniture and everyday objects. The second exhibition, which took place inautumn 1912, included artists from the group Die Brücke, as well as works by
Othon Friesz and André Derain and a still life by Picasso. The architectural intervention again responded to the presented works of art and objects. Both exhibition
projects are important initiatives and can serve as case studies in disconnecting theavant-garde discourse from its Western European linkage.28 The exhibitions showthat Prague avant-garde activities were not passive in their reception of artistic
trends that originated in centres such as Paris. The group’s active appropriation ofavant-garde aesthetics, by accommodating them in their local cultural and ideological setting, was thus further explored in the conception of the third exhibitionin spring 1913, which takes centre stage in Winter’s article. In an act of pushing
the practice of what a traditional exhibition framework offers, the members of
the group chose not to show their own artworks. Instead, the exhibition brought
together a range of Parisian avant-garde art, which was displayed next to Czech
Gothic sculptures, folk art with reverse glass paintings, and nineteenth-century
religion-themed carvings, as well as a series of ceramics. A further section showcased art and artefacts – textiles and sculptural objects – from across Asia, in
addition to one sculpture from Africa and one from Columbia. While the Groupof Fine Artists clearly intended to probe aesthetic cross-connections to different
14

Simone Willecultural geographies and epochs, their approach also signals a desire to act asavant-garde from the periphery, to become part of what Piotrowski has referred
to as ‘horizontal history of the European avant-garde to deconstruct the relations
between the centre and the margins in the world history of modern art’.29 Wintertherefore makes connections between the third Prague exhibition of the Group ofFine Artists and avant-garde manifestations in Russia and Budapest, as well as in
Paris and Munich. The Prague artists had direct access to art from Asia and therefore the possibility to include a considerable number of artworks of Asian origin in
their exhibition because of the many collections of Asian art in and around Prague.
The Prague artists endeavour was to identify and appropriate the formal qualitiesof the tribal to Central European values instead of Parisian or German values.

COLLECTIONS, COLLECTORS, AND THEIR NETWORKS
While the contributors to this section discuss key collections of Asian art in Central Europe, they examine the way individual collectors built their networks inresponse to the cultural and political climate. The transregional connections thatthese individual networkers established flourished under the global condition of
empires and the Cold War. The article by Markéta Hánová locates the origins of
one of the most important museum collections of Asian art in the Czech Republic
today – namely, the one at the NGP. The emergence of the collection coincides
with the development of the first Czechoslovak Republic, where, following theyoung country’s economic and industrial orientation towards East Asia, a couple of private collectors seized the opportunity to cultivate connections with
East Asia and to organise sales exhibitions and auctions of mainly Japanese andChinese art in both Prague and Berlin, with the intention of making a profit.
Similar strategies are also discussed in the article by Johannes Wieninger, whose‘Networks of Enthusiasm for Japan’ are explained in the same section. However,
because of global economic crisis in the early 1930s the Czechoslovak Republic
had limited national funds to make large aquisitions, which slowed the establishment of the desired collection of Asian art. As Hánová shows, Vincenc Kramář
(1877–1969), art historian and director of the State Collection at the time, saw theneed to create visual links between Asian art and the existing Old Masters collection in Prague to show, as he put it, a continuous development of world art. This
allows a connection to be made with Kramář’s general interest – namely, to create
openness to art beyond national borders.30 The close ties that were establishedwith Japan during this time were further nurtured during the propaganda policiesof the German Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia during the Second
World War. The immediate post-war period saw the confiscation of property ofGerman nationals and, after the communist regime came to power in 1948, thatof the Czech aristocracy and entrepreneurs. In this period, the Ministry of Education, Science, and Art came to realise what previous initiatives had envisaged toCollecting Asian Art: Central Europe’s Transregional Connectivity

15

do – namely, the establishment of the Department of Oriental Art at the NGP in
1951, which is the Collection of Asian Art now. While this enabled the collective
organisation of art objects of Asian origin in Czechoslovakia under the care of
the NGP, it also allowed for further purchases from significant private collections.
The activities of the Department of Oriental Art were closely connected to the
Oriental Institute, which was moved from the Charles University to become partof the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1952.31 The institutional frameworkand the role that Czech oriental scholars played in overseeing the Department ofOriental Art at the NGP ensured that the activities were scholarly framed. The factthat Lubor Hájek, who became head of the collection, was an Indologist, confirms
this. The New Orient, to which, following Soviet propaganda, the Czechoslovak
government turned, prioritised China in the 1950s. Hánová therefore connects
decolonisation efforts and the struggle of the peoples of Asia against the Western
capitalist powers with the founding of the journal Nový Orient32 and refers to
the political changes and massive developments across Asia, which Czechoslovakia, as she puts it, views as a chance to engage with as the ‘new Orient’. While
new acquisitions were made, the centralisation of Asian art from all parts of thecountry was pursued under the care of the NGP and Hájek’s leadership. At thesame time, a series of national survey exhibitions, such as Chinese Art from 1955,
were underway, demonstrating transregional connectedness, rearranged political alliances, and internationalism framed by Cold War cultural orientation anddependencies. The frequency of such exhibitions during the post-war era is usually ignored by accounts of studies of Asian survey exhibitions in Europe, which
has led to an underrated view of the transregional cultural exchange among the‘brotherly’ states of the socialist world.33 Moreover, Hájek’s curatorial efforts
showed the will to establish connections between the art objects of the Asia collection, and during the multiple moves of the permanent exhibition to sometimes
remote castles, he also succeeded in forming synergies with the prevailing local
architectural conditions.
Agnieszka Kluczewska-Wójcik’s article on the Polish collector Feliks Jasieński
is also about creating synergies between art, based on transregional spatialconnections. Jasieński was at the forefront of exhibiting and establishing acomprehensive collection of Japanese art in Poland from as early as 1901, andhe understood his task as a curator to convey all aspects of Japanese art to thePolish audience. This strategy not only involved well-staged, changing displaysof Japanese art in Warsaw, Lwów (Lviv), and Kraków, but was accompanied bypublications in which he emphasised the exemplary character of Japanese art for
Polish art in its adherence to a national identity. Thus, the Polish collector saw inJapanese aesthetic qualities – such as colour, composition, and drawing – a modelfor Polish artists to learn to create art with a local character. In the absence of asovereign nation state during the time of the three-part Partition of Poland, theproduction of a local art environment by way of participating in avant-garde discourses established in Paris and Moscow was thus a central concern.34 Jasieński’s
16

Simone Willeintention to work, from the outset, with original works of art from Asia and tocreate cross-connections with his preferred Polish contemporary artists allows
for a link to be made with the representational strategy of the third exhibition of
the Group of Fine Artists in Prague, which is at the heart of Tomáš Winter’s article. The collection that Felix Jasieński finally donated to the National Museum in
Kraków, as outlined by Kluczewska-Wójcik, was therefore intended to be shownwithin the framework of Polish and European art, thereby drawing connections
between art from different parts of the world.
The networks that Johannes Wieninger focuses on were strategically transregional in nature, ensuring, in the case of his protagonists, the supply and distribution of Japanese art across Europe between the 1870s and the 1920s. Wieninger’s
essay also refers, as it were, to the euphoria of Europeans, or their enthusiasm,
as the author aptly calls it, for faraway places and the resulting art movement of
Japonisme, which had captivated Europe since the 1860s. It was, above all, Japanese woodblock prints that influenced Impressionism at the end of the nineteenth century and ensured, both formally and compositionally, art’s breaking
away from academism and its traditions.35 The group of influential collectors ofJapanese art that Wieninger thus introduces fuelled and supplied this enthusiasm
for Japanese art in Europe. These individuals were distinguished by their well-developed networks, based on their expertise and connections between Europe andJapan, on the basis of which they built their collecting activities. They maintained
relations throughout Europe and Japan, and to some extent in China, Siam, andIndia. By revisiting the networks that they established, Wieninger considers how
the representation of Japan in Europe developed, especially in contrast to the twoworld fairs in London (1862) and Paris (1867) and the following world fair in
Vienna (1873). The Vienna event was particularly successful in this respect, for it
was here, after the establishment of the monarchy in Japan in 1868, that the Japanese government took it upon itself to successfully manage their self-representation. As a result, ‘Japan pushed itself into the consciousness of the West’,36 andWieninger thus introduces the activities of a group of individual collectors, whosetransregional networks shaped museum collections in Vienna, Hamburg, Dresden, Leipzig, and Venice. In their position as diplomats, imperial officials, interpreters, and state or imperial-supported museum officials, these individuals took
advantage of the opportunity that working within the framework of imperialist
policy brought in order to establish their own collections and subsequent tradingbusinesses. These often family-run enterprises also published illustrative sales
and auction catalogues, thereby establishing themselves as experts in the field andtheir advice was frequently sought after. The interconnectedness between these
individual collectors and experts also led to museum exhibitions at which art
dealers, as we understand them today, acted as curators. This is how art dealerspresented their private collections to an audience with purchasing power, from
where the museum itself also made acquisitions. The demise of these networkers
in the first two decades of the twentieth century coincided with a geographicalCollecting Asian Art: Central Europe’s Transregional Connectivity

17

shift in collectors’ activities, which increasingly turned to the mainland, wherearchaeological undertakings in China were on the rise, and with them art objects
on the international markets. Wieninger concludes his text with a quotation fromthe Viennese art historian Ernst Diez, who assessed the Western collector’s turnfrom Japan to China in the context of the art historical significance of East Asia.
By referring to Japan as the Romans and to China as the Greeks of the East, Diez,
whose speciality was Islamic art, applies the art discourse cultivated by Gottfried
Semper and Carl Schnaase, for whom the Greek style was the standard of all
forms of art.37

SPOTLIGHT ON (COMMUNIST) ASIA
The transregional connections developed, cultivated, and displayed through collecting activities and strategies in the interwar and post-war era are explored in
more detail in the articles by Michaela Pejčochová, Uta Rahman-Steinert, andIván Szántó. All three tie in with processes already mentioned in the previous
articles – namely, the opening of the region of Central Europe through cultural
networks that offered the opportunity to display connectedness with Asian countries through art. The three articles’ focus on China and Western Asia, respectively, therefore allow for connections to be made with the preceding articles.
Pejčochová picks up where Wieninger and Kluczewska-Wójcik leave off in theirassessment that the enthusiasm for Japanese art was succeeded by an increased
interest in art from China. Rahman-Steinert, on the other hand, connects with
Hánová’s observation that the 1950s emphasis – from a communist country’s
point of view – lay on establishing close connections with the People’s Republic ofChina (PRC). Pejčochová sets out with a detailed analysis of the collecting activities of Vojtěch Chytil, his life and art-making in China, his teaching activities at
the Beijing Academy of Arts, and, linked with this, his close ties with those artists
that he most admired and collected. Not unlike the networkers that Wieninger
introduced in his account, Chytil used the opportunity that his position of having
first-hand access to East Asia gave him to organise sales exhibitions throughout
Central Europe in the interwar period. Ultimately, the dynamics of his activities
laid the foundation for the collection of modern Chinese ink paintings at the
NGP, which was one of the largest of its kind in Europe and came into being in
the 1950s and 1960s.38 In her assessment, Pejčochová outlines the transregional
and transcultural context of Chytil’s project during the interwar period, but also
points out that this projected a limited picture of the larger context of Chinesecontemporary painting at the time. In stark contrast to these ventures guided bypersonal inclinations, Rahman-Steinert’s focus on the East Asian Collection in
Berlin is marked by state domination, political motivation, and control, a direction that equally characterises the Prague collection in the post-Chytil era. Both
Pejčochová and Hánová refer to this in their texts.
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The cultural ‘gift’, which is the main topic of Rahman-Steinert’s article, implies
friendship, and this, it turns out, is the framework for understanding the relationship between the PRC and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The
author refers to the friendship treaty signed by the two countries in 1955, which
was seen by the GDR as an opportunity to distance itself from the colonial pastof imperial Germany. The declaration of friendship was symbolically accompanied by the return of items looted by German imperial troops in northern China
during the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901), a fact that Rahman-Steinert picks up
on to link it to the ‘gift’ which came as a surprise for the GDR for their ten-year
anniversary celebration of the PRC at the Pergamonmuseum. What preceded thisdonation was the process and preparation for systematically setting up the permanent exhibition of Chinese art in East Berlin. The procedure is similar to that
described by Hánová in her article on Prague: from sifting through provincial aswell as private collections with the aim of presenting the best of Chinese art in
the East German capital to drawing up lists with requests for permanent loans,which were sent to China. In East Berlin, on the other hand, the competition
with West Berlin and its high-quality collection of Chinese art in the Museum
Dahlem was seen as a benchmark to be measured against or, ideally, surpassed.
To compete with the West while displaying friendship and solidarity with China’s
cultural achievements and greatness was a desire that was also taken seriously by
the Chinese side. In what can be described as a transcultural undertaking, Chinese experts, accompanied by a German expert in the field, examined collectionsin the GDR so as to be able to assess the inventory situation. This is an interestingdetail because it shows us that although the German side had precise ideas about
what they wanted to show in the permanent China collection, the Chinese side
ultimately decided what was sent to Germany. The Berlin collection of Chinese
art is as unique as its counterpart in Prague. While both can be viewed within theframework of national preoccupation, here they are seen more as examples of cultural openness and a transregional orientation, which were made possible by thehistoric moment of globalisation through socialist rule and the Cold War. Whatthe history of these collections also allows us to reflect on is the region’s strategic
positioning in global processes through connections which, when studied froma transregional perspective, can potentially lead to decentralising projects concerned with global history.39
The transregional orientation that marks Hungary’s early communist era characterises Iván Szántó’s article. His study aims to shed some light on the collecting
and display of Islamic art in Hungary in the 1950s. Although economic, political,
and cultural conditions – not to mention religious implications –, all seem to havebeen discouraging the promotion of these kinds of exhibitions, such events could
still be realised during the first and most repressive decade of communist Hungary. This was partly a consequence of the recent flow of collections from private
hands into public collections which made a relatively large amount of material
suddenly available. At least as decisive, however, was the broad Cold War setting,Collecting Asian Art: Central Europe’s Transregional Connectivity

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which in the 1950s unexpectedly revalued the previously marginalised areas ofIslamic art and archaeology. Despite the narrow and haphazard range of Islamic
objects, the official cultural policy was able through their display, without much
effort, to simultaneously create a sense of cultural thaw for the domestic audience,
and, for international observers, to express a willingness to reach out to the world
beyond Europe: all of this in strict alignment with Soviet directives. The complex
task required suitable professionals from both a scientific and a political point ofview. Szántó provides an overview of these exhibitions and discusses the background of their creation.

SOUTH ASIA IN POST-WAR PRAGUE
Turning to South Asia, Zdenka Klimtová and Simone Wille examine the personalconnections that developed between a group of Indologists from post-war Prague
and modernist artists from post-partition India. Between the early 1950s and1980s, these connections led to a series of exhibitions and to a collection of Indian
modernist art in Prague, which has received little attention from scholars working on South Asian modernism or scholars working on projects globalising East
Central Europe.40 Zdenka Klimtová thus sheds light on these relationships fromher position as curator of South Asian art at the NGP, and from her experienceof having had first-hand contact with some of the Indian artists who had cometo Prague at that time. Klimtová was also working with some of the protagonists who were instrumental in establishing the connections with South Asia andbuilding the collection of Indian modernist art in Prague. This is how she elaborates on the activities of the founder of the collection of Asian art in the NGP,
Lubor Hájek, thus complementing the report by Markéta Hánová, who referredabove all to Hájek’s commitment to collecting and exhibiting art from East Asia.
Klimtová’s detailed account of Hájek’s activities to bring Indian art and artists toCzechoslovakia is characterised by his understanding of Indian languages andculture as an Indologist, but not least by his understanding of Asian art in generaland his desire to present it to Czechoslovakia as part of the collection. From thelarge India exhibition held between 1955 and 1956, prepared by the Lalit Kala
Academy to tour from Prague to East Central Europe, to several one-person exhibitions that took place mainly in and around Prague, the author makes connections with acquisitions and the displays of the collection of Asian art at various
temporary locations, which are also mentioned in Hánová’s article. In a 1969 fire,several of the Indian modernist artworks were destroyed at one such location,
and all that remains are index cards, together with black-and-white photographsthat document the loss. The study visits of Indian artists to Prague were anotheropportunity for the NGP to make acquisitions. The largest share in the collection
is taken up by thirty-eight works on paper by the artist Chittaprosad Bhattacharya(1915–1978), which is also the largest collection of this artist’s works in a public
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Simone Wille

museum. Several works by Indian artists from the NGP collection have been lentfor past exhibitions in India, including works by Chittaprosad. Loan requests ofthis kind have also been recorded more recently and therefore continue to shape
the transregional linkages between the two countries. The relationship between
Indian artists and cultural networkers like Hájek in Prague is characterised by ahigh level of personal commitment that marked the Cold War period. The transregional nature of these friendships not only resulted in a unique collection but
also seemed to have supported and accompanied these individuals’ transitional
phase, which marked this period globally.
The way the Nehruvian India of the 1950s selectively established connections
with the newly organised post-war world in general and the socialist world inparticular is also at the heart of Simone Wille’s article, where she sheds light on
the journeys of India’s most celebrated modernist artist Maqbool Fida Husain(1915–2011) to Central Europe. Husain’s frequent visits to Prague from as early
as 1956 were related to friendships with a number of personalities, some of which
Klimtová reports on in her contribution. The works that resulted from this –drawings, paintings, a performative work, and a film – are analysed in detail in
Wille’s article, thereby establishing an understanding for a consciousness of formor an artistic subjectivity that responded to movement and mobility, but also to
the friendship and discourse that was located between East and West. The author
begins with Husain’s resistance to the Cold War cultural politics that he finds
himself caught up in during the 1950s, and she references the way he overcomesthe cultural bureaucracy through romance and friendship in Prague, which led toa personal engagement with the Czechoslovak culture and the city of Prague. The
article draws from the latest research and recent publications to place Husain’s
Prague experience in a transcultural context. It opens up a new perspective on
Indian modernism that has largely oriented itself around the figure of M. F.
Husain and urges a fresh understanding of what has conventionally been referred
to as ‘internationalism’ in Indian art. Husain’s travels to Prague show once again
how artists made transregional connections and thus actively engaged in the
dynamics of global processes.

THE ARCHIVE: A REPOSITORY
Turning to the systematic archiving of East Asian art collections, Nataša Vampelj
Suhadolnik shares her experience and methodological approach in creating an
online database that makes the transregional journeys of Asian artefacts andtheir respective Slovenian involvement (as a private collector or as an institution)
widely accessible without any modern nation state border. With a large databaseof East Asian material from Slovenian museums and institutions, the VAZ website (https://vazcollections.si/) connects various objects of East Asian origin at thenational level and makes them accessible to the general public for the first time.
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Using virtual methods, this website breathes new life into a number of interestingand inspiring objects, as well as revealing their stories and the identities of theirowners, who over the last two centuries either travelled to East Asia themselves
or acquired these objects in some other way. Most of the objects of East Asianorigin were left behind as legacies by various individuals who travelled to China
or Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a result of the
newly established diplomatic relationships between Austro-Hungary and East
Asia. This opened the seas for an increasing number of Austro-Hungarian merchant and military ships, on board of which were also people from the Slovene
ethnic territory.

COLLECTING ASIAN ART: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
Collecting Asian Art: Cultural Politics and Transregional Networks in Twentieth-Century Central Europe concludes with a discussion between Simone Willeand Partha Mitter. This conversation connects with some issues that were raised
during the course of the conference in Prague and published in the articles here.
It looks at colonisation from a broader perspective by entering it via recent art
historical discussions on the global aspects of modernism. It revisits the spatial
and geographical school of thought and points to early proponents of the ‘provincialism problem’, such as Terry Smith, to connect with Piotr Piotrowski’s powerfulintervention in pointing to the exclusion of East Central Europe from mainstream
modernist discussions through ‘geo-history’. However, for Mitter, this does not
resolve the prevalent imbalance between centre and periphery which he sees
rooted in the long history of art. Mitter’s quest to decolonise modernism thus
considers a focused study of connections, networks, and transregional exchanges
as one possibility to make changes. When we examine the collecting and exhibiting activities in East Central Europe and the extensive exchange between many
Asian countries and the region, especially during the Cold War, we learn something about the esteem in which artists from Asia were held in Central European countries. Although these artists were often also represented in the West,they received far more attention in cities such as Prague, Warsaw, and Budapest.
According to Mitter, it is thus pertinent to be open to methods and practices andto cooperate in tandem with scholars from different regions to work, collaboratively and collectively, towards decentring the canon.
Taking a transregional approach to collections of Asian art in Central Europe,
the pages that follow open up multidirectional connections and unexpectedengagements. The complex histories of globalities that these studies reveal indicate a desire to partake in processes in a global context.

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Simone WilleNOTES
1.

2.

3.
4.

5.

6.

7.

8.
9.
10.

11.
12.

13.

Among the relevant exhibition catalogues that have appeared over the past decade, see, for example,
Karina H. Corrigan, Jan van Campen, and Femke Diercks, with Janet C. Blyberg (eds.), Asia in Amsterdam: The Culture of Luxury in the Golden Age (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 2015); Cecilie Hollberg (ed.),Textiles and Wealth in 14th Century Florence: Wool, Silk, Painting (Florence: Gallerie dell’Accademia,2018).
A conference dedicated to this topic was All the Beauty of the World: The Western Market for Non-European Artefacts (18th–20th Century), held in Berlin from 13 to 15 October 2016. Some of the conference papers from this conference were published in ‘Asian Art: Markets, Provenance, History’, Journalfor Art Market Studies 2, no. 3 (2018). Thanks go to Michaela Pejčochová for drawing my attention tothis conference.
See for example a recent exhibition, which looked at the Austro Czech explorer and collector Emil
Holub and his Africa expeditions. Emil Holub, National Museum – Náprstek Museum of Asian, Africanand American Cultures in Prague, exhibition catalogue, (Prague: National Museum, 2023).
Among the literature on personal encounters between protagonists from Europe and Asia on whichcollections of art were built, I would like to mention the historiographical study of the little-known
movements of intellectuals and ideas, images and objects between late nineteenth-century Florence andBombay by Filipa Lowndes Vicente, Other Orientalisms: India between Florence and Bombay, 1860–1900(New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2012).
On the circulation of ideas, see Diana Sorensen, ‘Editor’s Introduction: Alternative Geographic Mappings for the Twenty-First Century’, Territories and Trajectories: Cultures in Circulation, ed. Diana
Sorensen (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2018), 13–31; Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The
Social Conditions of the International Circulation of Ideas’, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 145,
no. 5 (2002): 3–8.
For recent initiatives focused on Collecting Asian art in the Western world, see the symposiums heldin Amsterdam in June 2018, https://culture360.asef.org/news-events/symposium-collecting-asian-artin-the-western-world-the-netherlands/ (last visited 26 May 2022) and at the University at Delawareand Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library in October 2018, https://sites.udel.edu/globalaestheticasiaamerica/ (last visited 27 June 2022).
From a historical point of view, see Frank Hadler and Matthias Middell, ‘Die Erforschung transnationaler Verflechtungen Ostmitteleuropas zwischen historiographischer Spurensicherung und Einbindungin das Konzept der global condition des späten 19. Jahrhunderts’, in Verflechtungen in Politik, Kultur und
Wirtschaft im östlichen Europa: Transnationalität als Forschungsproblem, ed. Jörg Hackmann and Peter
Oliver Loew (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018), 21–45; Peter Haslinger (ed.), ‘Ostmitteleuropa transnational,’ special issue, Comparative 18, no. 2 (2008): 7–10.
On the notion of ‘transregional’, see Matthias Middell, ‘Transregional Studies: A New Approach to
Global Processes’, in The Routledge Handbook of Transregional Studies, ed. Matthias Middell (Oxon and
New York: Routledge, 2019), 1-16.
On the social effect of artefacts, see Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture,
and Colonialism in the Pacific (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1991).
Cf. J. Elkins (ed.), Is Art History Global? (London and New York: Routledge, 2007); Hans Belting andAndrea Buddensieg (eds.), The Global Art World. Audiences, Markets, and Museums (Osterfildern: Hatje
Cantz, 2008); Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Catherine Dossin, and Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel (eds.), Circulations in the Global History of Art (London and New York: Routledge, 2015); Monica Juneja, Can Art
History be Made Global? Meditations from the Periphery (Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2023).
One of the early publications on the ‘global turn’ in art history is J. H. Casid and A. D’Souza (eds.), Art
History in the Wake of the Global Turn (Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,2014).
Cf. Monica Juneja, ‘Alternative, Peripheral or Cosmopolitan? Modernism as a Global Process’, in ‘Global
Art History’ Transkulturelle Verortungen von Kunst und Kunstwissenschaft, ed. Julia Allerstorfer andMonika Leisch-Kiesl (Bielefeld: transcript, 2017), 79–107. Premodern art historians tend to be viewed
as too conservative to respond to the ‘global turn’, yet they also began to take a new approach to thestudy of premodern globality in the late 2010s; see, for example, B. C. Keene (ed.), Toward a Global
Middle Ages: Encountering the World through Illuminated Manuscripts (Los Angeles: Getty Publications,2019).
Cf. Katja Castryck-Naumann (ed.), Transregional Connections in the History of East Central Europe(Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021); James Mark, Artemy M. Kalinovksy, and Steffi Marung (eds.),
Alternative Globalizations: Eastern Europe and the Postcolonial World (Bloomington: Indiana University

Collecting Asian Art: Central Europe’s Transregional Connectivity

23

14.
15.
16.

17.
18.

19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.

26.
27.

24

Press, 2020); Steffi Marung, Uwe Müller, and Stefan Troebst, ‘Monolith or Experiment? The Bloc as a
Spatial Format’, in Spatial Formats under the Global Condition, ed. Steffi Marung and Matthias Middell(Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019), 275-309. For art historical based research and writing concerned with East and Central Europe and their transregional connectivity, cf. Beata Hock, ‘Introduction’ and ‘Managing Trans/Nationality: Cultural Actors within Imperial Structures’, in Globalizing East
European Art Histories – Past and Present, ed. B. Hock and A. Allas (New York and Oxon: Routledge,2018), 1–22, 39–52.
Cf. Piotr Piotrowski, ‘On the Spatial Turn, or Horizontal Art History’, Umění LVI (2008): 378–383; Piotr
Piotrowski, ‘East European Art Peripheries Facing Post-Colonial Theory’, nonsite.org, no. 12 (2014),
https://nonsite.org/east-european-art-peripheries-facing-post-colonial-theory/.
https://www.phil.muni.cz/journals/index.php/arteastcentral and https://digilib.phil.muni.cz/bitstream/
handle/11222.digilib/143598/2_ArtEastCentral_1–2021–1_2.pdf?sequence=1, https://doi.org/10.5817/
AEC2021–1-1
Concerning the Asia collection in Vienna’s MAK (Museum of Applied Arts), see Johannes Wieninger, ‘Die Asien-Sammlung im Österreichischen Museum für Kunst und Industrie und die Wiener
Weltausstellung von 1873’, in Roland Prügel (ed.), Geburt der Massenkultur. Beiträge der Tagung des
WGL-Forschungsprojekts ‘Wege in die Moderne … ’ im Germanischen Nationalmuseum (Nuremberg:
Verlag des germanischen nationalmuseums, 2014), 30–37; Johannes Wieninger, ‘Sammlungsgeschichte– Die MAK-Sammlung Asien 1864–2014. The MAK Asia Collection 1864–2014’, in MAK/Gide Asian.
China-Japan-Korea, ed. Chistoph Thun-Hohenstein and Johannes Wieninger (Munich: 2014), 29–49.
For a list of most of Johannes Wieninger’s publications, visit https://www.wieninger.com/publikationen(last visited 26 May 2022).
See also Asia through Art and Anthropology: Cultural Translation Across Borders, ed. Fujubi Nakamura,Morgan Perkins and Olivier Krischer (London and New York; Bloomsbury, 2013).
While canonical art histories centred on a Western European and North American modernist canon
still dominate initiatives to globalise art history, there is a steady increase in projects that prove otherwise. Important works include Kobena Mercer, ‘Introduction’, in Cosmopolitan Modernism, ed. Kobena
Mercer (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 2005), 6–23; Partha Mitter, ‘Decentering Modernism: Art History and Avant-Garde Art from the Periphery’, Art Bulletin XC, no. 1 (December 2008):
531–574. See also the four responses to the latter article and the concluding reply by Mitter; Christian
Kravagna, Transmoderne: Eine Kunstgeschichte des Kontakts (Berlin: b_books, 2017); Christian Kravagna, Transmodern: An Art History of Contact: 1920–60 (Manchester: Manchester University Press,2022); Monica Juneja, ‘“A Very Civil Idea …” Art History and World-Making – With and beyond the
Nation’, Engaging Transculturality: Concepts, Key Terms, Case Studies, ed. Laila Abu-Er-Rub, Christiane
Brosius, Sebastian Meurer, and Diamantis Panagiotopoulos (London and New York: Routledge, 2021),
293–316.
See Bénédicte Savoy, Charlotte Guichard, and Christine Howald (eds.), Acquiring Cultures: Histories ofWorld Art on Western Markets (Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2018).
Suzanne L. Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 387–426.
Josef Strzygowski, Orient oder Rom? Beiträge zur Geschichte der spätantiken und frühchristlichen Kunst(Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1901).
Marchand, German Orientalism, 400.
For more information on the conference, see https://www.ngprague.cz/en/event/3092/collecting-asianart-in-prague-conference (last accessed 10 January 2023).
Patterns of Transregional Trails. The Materiality of Artworks and Their Place in the Modern Era. Bombay,
Paris, Prague, Lahore, ca. 1920s to early 1950s (P29536-G26), funded by the Austrian Science Fund(FWF), 2016–2021.
Persian Art in Vienna, 1900–1945: The Shifting of Objects, Images and Ideas in Central Europe (M 2428G25), funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), 2019–2022. See two of her previous research outcomes concerning the role of Central Europe in the formation of non-European art collections during
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Yuka Kadoi and Iván Szántó (eds.), The Shaping of
Persian Art: Collections and Interpretations of the Art of Islamic Iran and Central Asia (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013); Iván Szántó and Yuka Kadoi (eds.), The Reshaping of
Persian Art: Art Histories of Islamic Iran and Beyond (Piliscsaba: Avicenna Institute of Middle EasternStudies, 2019).
See Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Holding the World in Balance: The Connected Histories of the IberianOverseas Empires, 1500 – 1640’, American Historical Review 112, no. 5 (December 2007): 1359–1385.
See Partha Mitter, ‘Rabindranath Tagore and Okakura Tenshin in Calcutta: The Creation of a Regional
Asian Avant-garde Art’, in Arrival Cities: Migrating Artists and New Metropolitan Topographies in the

Simone Wille

28.
29.

30.
31.
32.
33.

34.
35.
36.
37.

38.
39.
40.

20th Century, ed. Burcu Dogramaci, Mareike Hetschold, Laura Karp Lugo, Rachel Lee, and Helene Roth
(Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2020), 150.
See Per Bäckström and Benedikt Hjartarson (eds.), Decentering the Avant-Garde (Amsterdam and New
York: Rodopi, 2014).
Piotr Piotrowski, ‘Toward a Horizontal History of the European Avant-Garde’, in Europa! Europa? The
Avant-Garde, Modernism and the Fate of a Continent, ed. Sascha Bru, Jan Baetens, Benedikt Hjartarson,
Peter Nicholls, Tania Ørum, and Hubert van den Berg (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), 49–58. A recent
discussion about Piotrowski’s theories and this text in particular has led to a special issue of Umění:Journal of The Institute of Art History 69, no. 2 (2021), edited by Steven Mansbach. See also the reviewof this special issue by Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius, ‘The Place of Modernism in Central EuropeanArt’, Journal of Art Historiography, no. 26 (June 2022),
https://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/murawska-muthesius-rev.pdf
Vincenc Kramář, Kubismus (Brno: 1920); see also Matthew Rampley, ‘Networks, Horizons, Centres andHierarchies’, Umění Art 2, LXIX (2021): 157.
The Oriental Institute was founded in 1922 but started to operate in 1929, when a suitable venue wasfound.
The journal Nový Orient was established in 1945 by the Oriental Institute, and starting in 1961, it was
supplemented with the English-language version New Orient Bimonthly, which was published until
1971.
For some recent research devoted to these lesser-noticed globalisation routes, see the international
conference The Global GDR. A Transcultural History of Art (1949–1990), TU Dresden & Albertinum,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 9–11 July 2022; Simone Wille, South Asia in Central Europe:
The Mobility of Artists and Art Works between 1947 and 1989, Austrian Science Fund FWF (V880-G),
University of Innsbruck; Marcus Kenzler, ‘“Sozialismus war für mich auch Glaubenssache”, Über die
Darstellung Lateinamerikas und die Verwendung christlicher Symbolik in der Kunst der DDR’, in Doing
Culture under State-socialism: Actors, Events, and Interconnections, ed. Beáta Hock (Leipzig: Leipziger
Universitätsverlag, 2015), 4, 24, 68–83.
Cf. Timothy O. Benson, ‘Introduction’, Central European Avant-Gardes: Exchange and Transformation,
1910 – 1930 (Cambridge, MA, and Los Angeles: MIT and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2002),
12–22 (exh. cat.).
Johannes Wieninger, ‘Gedanken zum Japonismus’, in Schiffbrüche und Idylle: Mensch, Natur und dievergängliche, fliessende Welt (Ukiyo-e) in Ost und West. Das Symposium, ed. Hans-Günther Schwarz,
Geraldine Gutiérrez de Wienken, and Frieder Hepp (Munich: ludicium, 2014), 260.
Johannes Wieninger, ‘Networks of Enthusiasm for Japan’, in this volume, p. 97.
Gottfried Semper, Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten oder praktische Ästhetik: ein
Handbuch für Techniker, Künstler und Kunstfreunde (Band 1): Die textile Kunst für sich betrachtet
und in Beziehung zur Baukunst (Frankfurt a.M.: Verlag für Kunst und Wissenschaft, 1860), https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1299; Karl Schnaase, Geschichte der bildenden Künste im Mittelalter, vol. I,
Altchristliche, byzantinische, muhammedanische, karolingische Kunst (Düsseldorf: 2nd ed., 1869).
Cf. Michaela Pejčochová, ‘The Formation of the Collection of 20th Century Chinese Painting in the
National Gallery in Prague – Friendly Relations with Faraway China in the 1950s and Early 1960s’, Arts
Asiatiques 67 (2012): 97–106, https://doi.org/10.3406/arasi.2012.1779.
Katja Castryck-Naumann (ed.), Transregional Connections in the History of East Central Europe, 7.
Scholarship on modernist art from South Asia has selectively identified South Asian artists’ connections
to Central European locations, without serious research, however. Cf. Sanjukta Sunderason, Partisan
Aesthetics: Modern Art and India’s Long Decolonization (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020),
199; Sonal Khullar, Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity, and Modernism in India,
1930–1990 (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 26; Iftikhar Dadi, Modernism and the Artof Muslim South Asia (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 122. For in-depth
studies on some of these connections, see the following publications by Simone Wille: Modern Art inPakistan: History, Tradition, Place (New Delhi and London: Routledge, 2015), 21–39; ‘A Transnational
Socialist Solidarity: Chittaprosad’s Prague Connection’, Stedelijk Studies, no. 9 (autumn 2019): n.p.; ‘The
Lidice Collection of Postwar Modernist Art: An Art History Informed by Engagement and Circulation’,in Come Closer: The Biennale Reader, ed. Vít Havránek and Tereza Stejskalová (Prague: tranzit andSternberg Press, 2020), 51–72; ‘Chittaprosad’s Linocut Prints at the National Gallery in Prague: Understanding Indo-Czech Cultural Relations in the Postwar Era’, Bulletin of the National Gallery in Prague
XXX (2020): 6–21; and her chapter in the present volume.

Collecting Asian Art: Central Europe’s Transregional Connectivity

25

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Kenzler, Marcus. ‘“Sozialismus war für mich auch Glaubenssache”, Über die Darstellung Lateinamerikas unddie Verwendung christlicher Symbolik in der Kunst der DDR’. In Doing Culture under State-socialism:
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Mansbach, Steven, ed. ‘Networks, Horizons, Centres and Hierarchies: On the Challenges of Writing on Modernism in Central Europe’. Special issue, Umění: Journal of The Institute of Art History 69, no. 2 (2021):
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Cambridge University Press, 2009.
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XC, no. 1 (December 2008): 531–574.
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67 (2012): 97–106. https://doi.org/10.3406/arasi.2012.1779.
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Wieninger, Johannes. ‘Gedanken zum Japonismus’. In Schiffbrüche und Idylle: Mensch, Natur und die vergängliche, fliessende Welt (Ukiyo-e) in Ost und West. Das Symposium, edited by Hans-Günther Schwarz, Geraldine Gutiérrez de Wienken, and Frieder Hepp, 260–268. Munich: ludicium, 2014.
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Cultural Relations in the Postwar Era’. Bulletin of the National Gallery in Prague XXX (2020): 6–21.

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THE LOCATION OF ASIAN ART
IN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURYCENTRAL EUROPE

THE IDEALS OF THE EAST: ASIAN ART AND
THE CRISIS OF VISUAL EXPRESSION ACROSSTHE GLOBE, CA. 1900*
Yuka Kadoi

Among the influential art historical texts datable to the early twentieth century,
The Ideals of the East: With Special Reference to the Art of Japan, written by theJapanese scholar Kakuzo Okakura (also known as Okakura Tenshin; 1863–1913),
is often acclaimed not only as a milestone in his intellectual life but also as one of
the most influential publications that served to define what was later called ‘Asianart’.1 Released on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War and written in English, it left
a long-lasting legacy after its publication by the London-based publisher John
Murray in 1903. Although this influential book has been the subject of investigation from a perspective of pan-Asianism due to its significant cultural impact
on British colonies in Asia, particularly with regard to the author’s sojourn in the
Indian subcontinent and his interaction with South Asian intellectuals, notably
with Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), there remains much to be said on thismaster narrative within a wide spectrum of art histories beyond the Indo-Pacificcultural axis.2 This chapter, thus, casts a fresh eye on The Ideals of the East as thecrisis point in representation across the globe around the turn of the twentiethcentury by underscoring Okakura’s journey to Europe via the United States in thelate 1880s. Furthermore, it considers the collecting of Asian art from the perspective of individual encounters and cultural networks, rather than dealing with theart collection as one single entity.
To understand the historiographical background of Okakura’s transcendental output, it is worth looking at one of the world maps made in Meiji Japan as
the mental map of the rapidly modernised insular country on the fringe of the
Pacific Ocean (fig. 1). Entitled ‘Bankoku Zenzu’ (literally, ‘Universal Map’), thismap clearly demonstrates how Japan – just a few decades after the adoption andadaptation of Western technologies and ideologies as a result of the Meiji Restoration in 1868 – was able to execute the map in a visibly Western style, in particular
how to locate this tiny island country in the centre of the world.3 Moreover, thisThe Ideals of the East

31

Figure 1. Sentaro
Yoshimura: Bankoku
zenzu. Meiji 21 (1888),
43 × 70 cm. East Asian
Library, UC Berkeley (A47).
(See plate 1, p. 241)

map projects not only the idea of centricity but also the binary concept of Eastand West, an Orientalist notion of its own superiority over others: accordingly,
the ‘East’ in the context of modern Japan came to be perceived not as the direction
towards the point of the horizon where the sun would rise but as an imaginative
geography with particular cultural traits, designated in a light red colour, next toJapan in the centre, differentiated by its dark red colour; the ‘East’ is hereby sandwiched between two ‘Western’ geographical terrains in the northern hemisphere– namely, Europe in green and North America in purple.
Before the nineteenth century, people in this insular country did not think ofthemselves as belonging to something called Japanese or Asians or by locating
themselves between East and West according to their own cultural norms. The
fact is that the country was not only geographically isolated but also officiallyclosed to the rest of the world for more than two hundred years, from the 1630s
to 1853 – a period known as Sakoku (literally, ‘secluded nation’) – apart fromextremely limited overseas contacts through select foreign traders.4 It is true that
this long-term closure made it possible not only to preserve the country’s traditions but also to develop its own unique paradigm to engage other cultures whenmany European nations expanded their colonial influence across Asia.5 But oncethe perception of the other was introduced from the West, this culture-centrism
concept quickly began to reshape Japan’s civilisational identity in a paradoxicalway, neither Eastern nor Western, nor between Eastern and Western but, rather
ambiguously, both Eastern and Western at the same time.
Under such complex cultural-ideological circumstances, the author of The Ideasof the East (fig. 2) grew up and became one of the major transcultural personalities
in modern Japan.6 Born in Yokohama on the eve of the Meiji Restoration, Okakura
had a typical Meiji elite upbringing. By studying classical Chinese and English to
get the gist of cosmopolitanism in his youth, he went on to master English as his
language of critical thinking. Having entered Tokyo Imperial University, the young
32

Yuka Kadoi

Figure 2. Kakuzo Okakura in kimono, Boston, 1904.
Photographer unknown. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum,
Boston, MA. (See plate 2, p. 242)

aspiring student became an assistant to Ernest
Fenollosa (1853–1908), one of the pioneering, if not controversial, American historiansof Japanese art.7 After his journey to the Westin the mid-1880s, Okakura returned to Japanto get involved with the preservation of traditional Japanese art at Tokyo University of
the Arts. He travelled across the Asian continent during the last decade of the nineteenth
century to find out the Eastern roots of Japanese art and culture, Buddhism inparticular. Following the appearance of The Ideas of the East, Okakura was invitedby William Sturgis Bigelow (1850–1926), an American collector of Japanese art,
to join the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1904, and Okakura later became
the head of the Asian art department. This position was later succeeded by the
Sri Lanka-born historian and philosopher Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877–1947).8
Okakura’s mentor, Fenollosa, is known to have been one of the principal advocates of the preservation of traditional Japanese art. However, he has also been
fiercely criticised, not only having had a certain neo-Buddhist stance on Japaneseculture but also having smuggled treasures from Japan into the United States on the
grounds that traditional arts and crafts, which had been neglected in the nation’s
drive towards industrialisation and modernisation, would need to be protected so as
to combat total destruction.9 During the late nineteenth century, Japan underwent
a drastic religio-cultural shift, called Haibutsu Kishaku (literally, ‘abolish Buddhism
and destroy Shakyamuni’), whereby the nationwide prosecution of Buddhism wasinitiated, followed by the destruction of Buddhist temples, images, and texts.10
While this iconoclasm was initially intended to secularise Buddhist institutions
that had been dominating Japanese society for centuries, this served to reformulate
Shinto, then a largely forgotten indigenous animistic and shamanistic belief, to beelevated as a national religion of the country.11 Shinto was considered suitable forthe ideological shift of Meiji Japan, since Buddhism was ultimately an import from
India via China, but Shinto, literally meaning ‘the way of God’, would look moremonotheistic and in many ways appear to be more Western than Eastern.
An interesting parallel can be drawn between Japan and some Middle Easterncountries, particularly Turkey and Iran, in terms of artistic modernisation. As
in the case with Japan’s rediscovery of Ukiyo-e and Buddhist art, Middle Eastern countries rediscovered their rich cultural heritage through Euro-American
assessments but at the same time struggled to create something original and creative. While pursuing experimental modes of representation, they often responded
The Ideals of the East33

to modernity through cultural self-reflection, either by copying Western models
or by borrowing elements coming from their own non-Western and Westernsources to produce derivative works of art.12 The former is, for instance, echoedin artworks of the late Ottoman painter Osman Hamdi Bey (1842–1910), whose
self-Orientalising painting continues to provoke academic and commercial interests alike,13 and the late Qajar court painter Mohammad Ghaffari (1848–1940),
a.k.a. ‘Kamal-ol-Molk’, who cultivated his pictorial skills by copying works of somewell-known Old Masters’ paintings during his stay in Europe (1898–1902).14 In
other words, if the names of the painters are not visible on the first glance, thesepaintings could be attributed to the likes of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) andRembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), respectively.15 Furthermore, modern Middle
Eastern countries – such as Turkey, Iran, and other newly independent countries
in Asia – imitated Japan’s cultural policy to form an alliance for non-Westernmodernisation and anti-Westernisation.16
In this context, one may wonder to what extent a history of Middle Eastern
art could be connected with that of Asian art. This is an ongoing historiographicaldebate. To make a long story short, Middle Eastern art is generally viewed to be
more closely associated with the history of European art, thanks to the Middle
East’s shared classical heritage across the Mediterranean region as well as ramifications of the nineteenth-century Orientalist manoeuvre.17 Within non-Western
fields of art historical research, the overreaching division between Asian art andMiddle Eastern art was unfortunately underlined during the early twentieth century, although it is our current twenty-first-century duty to incorporate Middle
Eastern art into a more inclusive, wider art historical horizon of Asian art.

JOURNEYS THROUGH THE WEST
Without doubt, Okakura’s stay in India was one of the decisive factors that stirred
him to make a manifesto on Asian art. A key to understanding Okakura’s initial
impulse to write The Ideals of the East is, however, his visit to the West in the
mid-1880s.
In autumn 1886 Okakura and Fenollosa set off a journey to the United States,
first arriving in San Francisco and then moving on to the East Coast.18 While conducting fieldwork in Boston, New York, and Washington, DC, Okakura came tounderstand two essential aspects of American art at that time, both of which lacked
originality and creativity. First, Okakura confirmed that American visual culture
was entrenched in medievalism, a cycle of reception inspired by the European models of the Middle Ages: for instance, the first building of the Museum of Fine Arts inBoston, established in 1870, where he would find himself as the head of the Asianart department around 1904, was designed as the typical Gothic Revival style.19
Second, he must have experienced the growing fashionability of Japanese art inlate nineteenth-century America, namely Japonisme, with mixed emotions.20 The
34

Yuka Kadoi

Figure 3. A Gust of Wind by Emil Orlik. 1901. National Gallery
in Prague. Photograph © National Gallery in Prague 2023.
(See plate 3, p. 243)

rise of Japonisme in American art was largely
linked to the growth of the Arts and Crafts
movement of the 1880s and up to around
1910, when, ironically, Japan was downgrading its own traditional arts and crafts in favourof Western-style representational modes of
production. Having been unimpressed with
Gothic Revivalism and Japonisme in America, Okakura headed to the Old World, hoping to find the real origin of Western art.
In early 1887 Okakura and Fenollosa sailed to Europe from the United Satesand visited some of the major European cultural capitals at that time. Amongthe key locations that gave Okakura lasting impressions, Lyon was noteworthy,
given that the city made him question the competitiveness of textile industries
in Japan. After passing through Zurich, he continued his journey eastwards toCentral Europe via Tyrol and arrived in Vienna later in the same year.
Although Okakura’s visit to Vienna did not coincide with any major events, hemust have sensed that Japan was already part of the cultural fabric of the imperial
capital and its vicinity, some fifteen years after the Vienna world fair of 1873, thefirst international exposition officially participated in by the Meiji government.21
The Vienna fair was particularly important in the historicisation process of Japanese art, where the concept of art (bijutsu; literally, ‘act pertaining beauty’) was
introduced in conformity with the Western canon in fine art.22 The definition of
bijutsu was further articulated by Fenollosa in his 1882 lecture known today as‘Bijutsu Shinsetsu’ (‘The True Meaning of Fine Art’), which stressed its meaning
as equivalent to ‘fine art’ in the West, indicating that an ‘object of aesthetic appreciation’ (bijutsu), such as painting and sculpture, should be distinguished fromtraditional crafts (geijutsu; literally ‘act pertaining technical skills’).23
By the time of Okakura’s stay in Vienna, European artists had already started
seeking alternative modes of representation, in opposition to the strict academic
disciplines. Although any non-Western visual culture could have offered themsources of inspiration, it was Japonisme that served to transform European art
towards experimental modernity. In addition to Gustav Klimt (1862–1918),
the Austrian champion of this aesthetic movement, the craze for Japan was alsostrongly felt across the wider circle of Central European artists and architects.24
The Prague native artist Emil Orlik (1870–1932), for instance, is known to havedeveloped a distinctive pictorial style under the strong inspiration of Japanese
prints (fig. 3).25 Yet these were not what Okakura expected to encounter in Europe.
The Ideals of the East

35

Instead of the genesis of Western art, he confronted European copies of Japanese
art and once again began to question if anything original or creative ever existedin Western art.
Although Okakura was disappointed with the visual culture of fin de siècle
Central Europe, an important encounter in Vienna changed his mindset. Throughhis Japanese contacts in Vienna, he was able to meet Lorenz von Stein (1815–
1890), a German scholar of public administration and professor at the University of Vienna who was advising the Meiji government for establishing a codified
constitution.26 At the age of seventy-two, Stein kept his dignity when meeting
Okakura, then in his mid-twenties. Instead of feeling intimidated in front of thesenior academic, Okakura boosted his self-confidence to be able to participate in
an intellectual debate equally with Stein. This experience may have encouraged
him to position himself as an international expert of art and culture and began tofeel entitled to speak for the East, or even for both the East and the West.
Having been unable to obtain a satisfactory answer for the origin of Western art with his stopover in Vienna, Okakura moved to Florence – the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance – hoping to find a credible explanation for his
seemingly unanswerable query. Italy at that time was not particularly creative interms of visual culture, however; because the country was going through a great
deal of socio-economic changes as a result of the unification of different states(Risorgimento; 1848–1871), Italian art of the late nineteenth century can be at
best described as the transitional period between neo-Classicism and neo-Impressionism or called Divisionism (ca. 1890–1907), while the Renaissance legacy
suffered from neglect.27 The last major destination on Okakura’s European tour,
Paris, was the greatest disappointment for him. Japonisme was one of France’s
most enduring aesthetic movements and radically transformed visual culture in
Paris,28 yet once again, this was not what Okakura wished to see in Paris. It wastime for him to return to the East to search for a source of originality.

ORIGINALITY AND DERIVATIVENESS
Against the backdrop of his frustration with the visual culture of the Euro-American world in the late nineteenth century, The Ideals of the East can be considered as Okakura’s provocation, to demonstrate his ability to think critically andto write flamboyantly as equals in the Anglophone publishing sphere. This bookwas by no means translated from Japanese to English by a native Anglophone
speaker. As stressed in a preface, it was originally written in English, so it was
directed at English-speaking audiences from the outset.29 It was only in the late
1930s, twenty-five years after Okakura’s death, that the original English version
was translated into Japanese, when the country was drifting in uncharted watersof military conflicts, with the result that the Pacific War broke out in late 1941.30
Evoking the Victorian book design (fig. 4), The Ideals of the East could have been
36Yuka Kadoi

Figure 4. The Ideals of the East: with Special Reference
to the Art of Japan by Kakasu [sic] Okakura. First edition.
London: John Murray, 1903. (See plate 4, p. 244)

a perfect English-looking book, if there had
been no typo in the name of the author. This
misspelled name, Kakasu Okakura, was also
used by The New York Times when celebrating the book’s publication.31 Victorian literaryflavours permeate the contents of the book,in particular a panegyrical introductory text
provided by Margaret Nobel (also known as
Sister Nivedita Ramakrishna-Vivekananada;
1867–1911), an Irish nun who was in close
contact with Okakura.32 While comparing Okakura with the English arts andcrafts conservationist William Morris (1834–1896), she emphasised a high degreeof commonality among Japan, China, and India, along the lines of transnational
wisdom and spirituality with shared Eastern roots: ‘it is of supreme value to show
Asia, as Mr. Okakura does, not as the congeries of geographical fragments that
we imagined, but as a united living organism, the whole breathing a single complex life’.33 This universalist narrative was followed by yet another panegyric onher guru Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), the Bengali Hindu philosopher andreformist who propagated religious universalism.34
The main contents of The Ideals of the East was structured to narrate an ethno-national art history of Japan, albeit no illustrations, incorporating Asian values to support the most crucial part of Okakura’s argument, namely the genesisof Japanese art. Following the chapter on ‘primitive art’, the early historical period
was largely divided according to a set of Eastern systems of moral, social, andreligious teachings and geochronological orders – Confucianism from northern
China, Daoism from southern China, and Buddhism from India – to establish a
genealogical link between Japan and the Asian continent, as well as a thresholdto divide a history of Japanese art by the introduction of Buddhism in the sixth
century, hence the beginning of the Asuka era (550–700 CE) as the first Buddhist
period.35 Starting with the powerful slogan ‘Asia is One’ and ending with the glorification of Asia against the overwhelming tendency of modernisation as a malicious import from Western materialism, The Ideals of the East demonstrates how
at the time of publication the Japanese cultural theorist gained the credibility to
speak as an authority about both Eastern and Western art. His dualistic approach,in turn, served to enhance the uniqueness of Japanese-style rational thinking.
To what extent was The Ideals of the East original? Although this bookappears to show his ability to engage a more complex understanding of ideas in
his non-native language, Okakura was by no means introducing his trailblazing
The Ideals of the East37

concept of the East. It was neither the intellectual oeuvre to manifest his ambition to shape a new field of research nor the ideological tool to attack Western
hegemony on behalf of the East: The Ideals of the East should be recontextualised
as proof of his dependence on copying ideas derived from Western models and,in turn, replicating knowledge about the world in a way that made sense to theWest but not necessarily to the East. One of the derivative elements coming fromthe Western canon of art history is the periodisation process of Japanese art, particularly the overemphasis on Buddhism to divide a history into two separate
phases of religionisation, as Christianity set the standards for the formation ofEuropean art. This quasi-historical partition reminds us of other cases in the fieldof non-European art histories, such as Middle Eastern and South Asian arts, to bedichotomised by the introduction of Islam and the subsequent formation of Muslim-ruling dynasties as canonical subdivisions.36 Seeking originality, Okakura is
likely to have failed to ask himself how Western his engagement was with regard
to the question of the East. If Coomaraswamy maligned Indian art, Okakura
could have also to some extent participated in the maligning of Japanese art.37
The early twentieth century was a time of division, both physically and psychologically, when various dichotomous ideas were reconceptualised – ranging
from Orient oder Rome to East and West, as well as, to a certain extent, positive-sounding counterparts pertaining to cultural connectivity, for instance the
Silk Road.38 Among the problematics concerning stereotyping, there is no doubtthat dichotomisation would provide a simplified, misleading, and distorting viewof other cultures. Yet one should also argue that, if the idea of the East was createdby the West, the idea of the West as the model of individualism was articulated
as a result of non-Western modernity.39 In this aspect, the following extract from
Okakura’s lecture, entitled ‘Modern Problems in Painting’, at the International
Exhibition held in 1904 in St. Louis, is worthy of citation:
I do not mean to say that Japan should not study the Western methods,
for thereby she may add to her own method of expression. Nor do I desirethat Japan should not assimilate the wealth of ideas which the Western
civilization has amassed. On the contrary, the mental equipment of Japanese painting needs a strengthening through the accretion of the world’s
ideals. We can only become more human by becoming universal. What I
wish to protest against is the attitude of imitation which is so destructive of
individuality.40
To conclude a journey into Okakura’s ideals of the East, it would be worthwhile togaze upon one of the early twentieth-century Japanese paintings contemporary to
The Ideals of the East, Two Dragons Competing for the Jewel (fig. 5), and question
to what extent this painting is in essence Eastern, Western, traditional, modern,original, or derivative. This painting was a favourite of Isabella Stewart Gardner(1840–1924), and it was initially acquired by Okakura himself.41 It turned out that38

Yuka Kadoi

Figure 5. Two Dragons
Competing for the Jewel
by Taikan Yokoyama.
1904. Colour on silk,
51.2 × 76 cm. Isabella
Stewart Gardner Museum,
Boston, MA (C45).
(See plate 5, p. 245)

this was a work by Taikan Yokoyama (1868–1958), a protégé of Okakura and thefounder of Nihonga (literally, ‘Japanese painting’), Easternised Japanese painting
with a tendency towards abstraction, as a counterpart to Yoga (literally, ‘overseas
painting’), Westernised Japanese painting with a tendency towards realism.42 Whilethe birth of neo-Eastern visual culture has often been contextualised within the riseof Japan’s national cultural politics,43 many Nihonga paintings capture the conceptof The Ideals of the East, one of the master narratives of Asian art from the viewpoint of representational crises in the early twentieth century. In revisiting historical entanglements of Eastern spirituality, Yokoyama’s Two Dragons Competing for
the Jewel can be viewed as a manifestation of the ambiguity of Japan’s view towards
itself and its position in the rapidly globalising world, as exemplified in the levitating jewel as a metaphor for the land of the Rising Sun between two tree branches
terminating with dragon heads as analogies of West and East in confrontation.

NOTES
*
1.
2.

3.

The completion of this study was made possible thanks to the Lise Meitner Programme, Austrian Science Fund (FWF) (M2428-G25).
Kakasu [sic] Okakura, The Ideals of the East: With Special Reference to the Art of Japan (London: John
Murray, 1903).
See Brij Tankha (ed.), Okakura Tenshin and Pan-Asianism: Shadows of the Past (Leiden: Brill, 2008).
Among the recent studies dealing with Okakura and Tagore, see Partha Mitter, ‘Rabindranath Tagore
and Okakura Tenshin in Calcutta: The Creation of a Regional Asian Avant-garde Art’, in Arrival Cities: Migrating Artists and New Metropolitan Topographies in the 20th Century, ed. Burcu Dogramaci,
Mareike Hetschold, Laura Karp Lugo, Rachel Lee, and Helene Roth (Leuven: Leuven University Press,2020), 147–158.
The production of this type of Japanese world map can be traced to the early seventeenth century. On
the early modern Japanese world map (Bankoku shozu), see Elke Papelitzky, ‘A Description and Analysis of the Japanese World Map Bankoku Sozu in Its Version of 1671 and Some Thoughts on the Sourcesof the Original Bankoku Sozu’, Journal of Asian Studies 48, no. 1 (2014): 15–59. For further information
about the cartography of Japan, see Kazutaka Unno, ‘Cartography in Japan’, in The History of Cartography, Volume 2, Book 2. Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, ed. B. Harleyand David Woodward (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 346–477.

The Ideals of the East

39

22.

For the study on Sakoku from historical and contemporary perspectives, see Mayumi Itoh, Globalization of Japan: Japanese Sakoku Mentality and U.S. Efforts to Open Japan (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1998).
For a recent study of Japanese encounters with other cultures before 1850, see Ronald P. Toby, Engaging
the Other: ‘Japan’ and Its Alter-Egos, 1550–1850 (Leiden: Brill, 2019).
Among several studies concerning Okakura’s biography and his legacies, see Noriko Murai and Yukio
Lippit (eds.), ‘Beyond Tenshin: Okakura Kakuzo’s Multiple Legacies’, special issue, Review of Japanese
Culture and Society 24 (2012). His biographical data come from the following publications: Yasuko
Horioka, The Life of Kakuzo: Author of The Book of Tea (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1963). For in-depth
discussion on his transcultural traits, see Yuka Kadoi, ‘Embracing Islam: Okakura Tenshin at the Limitsof His Alternative Orientalism’, Journal of Transcultural Studies 13, nos. 1-2 (2022): 56-75.
Much has been said about their joint venture into the construction of Japanese aesthetic narratives. For
recent studies, see Arthur Mitteau, ‘L’universalisme de l’esthétique chez Okakura Kakuzo (dit Tenshin)
et Ernest Fenollosa: critique et actualité’, Ebisu: Études japonaises 50 (2013): 95–133.
For critical reassessments on Coomaraswamy, see Partha Mitter’s classic study Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 277–286. See alsoa recent study on Coomaraswamy and Japan: Shigemi Inaga, ‘A.K. Coomaraswamy and Japan: A Tentative Overview’, in Culture as Power: Buddhist Heritage and the Indo-Japanese Dialogue, ed. Madhu
Bhalla (London: Routledge, 2020), 109–131.
For further discussion on Fenollosa and his history of Asian art, see David Carrier, Museum Skepticism:
A History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries (New York: Duke University Press, 2006), Chapter 7(‘Ernest Fenollosa’s History of Asian Art’), 126–145.
For further discussion, see Martin Collcutt, ‘Buddhism: The Threat of Eradication’, in Japan in Transition: From Tokugawa to Meiji, ed. Marius B. Jansen and Gilbert Rozman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 143–167; James Edward Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism
and Its Persecution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).
For the reshaping process of Shinto as the national religion of Japan, see Jason Ānanda Josephson, The
Invention of Religion in Japan (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012).
See Wijdan Ali’s Modern Islamic Art: Development and Continuity (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1997), one of the pioneering studies in the field that would later be renamed ‘modern Middle Easternart’. Although it was written from a viewpoint of connecting premodern and modern ‘Islamic art’ histories,
Ali’s book set a benchmark for subsequent attempts to define the question of modernity in Middle Easternvisual culture. Please note that at that time, the term ‘Islamic art’ was used in a generic sense, implying
the art, architecture, and material culture of the Middle East and North Africa after the seventh century.
Among several studies concerning Osman Hamdi Bey, see Edhem Eldem, ‘Making Sense of Osman
Hamdi Bey and His Paintings’, Muqarnas 29 (2012): 339–383.
On Kamal-ol-molk, see Layla S. Diba, ‘Muhammad Ghaffari: The Persian Painter of Modern Life’, Iranian Studies 45, no. 5 (2012): 645–659.
Cf. Hamdi Bey’s Orientalist-style painting Koranic Instruction (1890), for instance, has recently fetchedover 4 million British pounds at Sotheby’s in London during the October Islamic Week in 2019 (https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2019/important-works-from-the-najd-collection/osman-hamdy-bey-koranic-instruction, accessed 8 July 2021); Kamal-ol-Molk’s copy of Rembrandt’s self-portrait(1897) is now in the collection of the Iranian Parliament (http://archive.ical.ir/files/museum/collections/paint/kamal/Picture%20342, accessed 21 July 2021).
See Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World-Order in Pan-Islamic and
Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
See Avinoam Shalem, ‘What Do We Mean When We Say “Islamic Art”? A Plea for a Critical Rewritingof the History of the Arts of Islam’, Journal of Art Historiography 6 (2012): 1–18.
Information on Okakura’s journey to the United State and Europe comes from the following publications: Horioka, The Life of Kakuzo; Emiko Arai, Okakura Tenshin Monogatari (Kanagawa: Kanagawa
Shimbun, 2004).
A photograph of the original building is available at https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016799436/,
accessed 22 December 2021. For further discussion on American medievalism, see Jan M. Ziolkowski,
The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity: Volume 3: The American Middle Ages
(Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2018).
On Japonisme in American art, see Julia Meech and Gabriel P. Weisberg, Japonisme Comes to America:
The Japanese Impact on the Graphic Arts 1876–1925 (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1990).
For an overview of Japan’s participation in world fairs, see Ellen P. Conant, ‘Refractions of the Rising
Sun: Japan’s Participation in International Exhibitions, 1862–1910’, in Japan and Britain: An Aesthetic
Dialogue, 1850–1930, ed. Tomoko Sato and Toshio Watanabe (London: Lund Humphries, 1991), 79–92.
Michael Marra, Essays on Japan: Between Aesthetics and Literature (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 45–46.

40

Yuka Kadoi

4.
5.
6.

7.
8.

9.
10.

11.
12.

13.
14.
15.

16.
17.
18.
19.

20.
21.

23.
24.

25.
26.
27.

28.
29.
30.
31.

32.
33.
34.

35.
36.

37.

38.

39.
40.

Marra, Essays on Japan, 46.
See Verena Traeger, ‘Gustav Klimts ethnografische Sammlung: Chinamode, Japonismus und das
Aschanti-Fieber in Wien um 1900 / Gustav Klimt’s Ethnographic Collection: Chinese Fashion, Japonism and the Ashanti Craze in Vienna around 1900’, in Hans-Peter Wipplinger and Sandra Tretter (eds.),
Gustav Klimt: Jahrhundertkünstler / Gustav Klimt: Artist of the Century, ed. Hans-Peter Wipplinger andSandra Tretter (Vienna: Leopold Museum, 2018), 137–165. For further information on Japonisme in
Vienna, see Johannes Wieninger, Verborgene Impressionen: Japonismus in Wien, 1870–1930 (Vienna:Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst, 1990). See also several exhibitions of Japonisme in
Budapest to celebrate the 150th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Japan and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the year of 2020, such as The Call of the East. Japonisme as Reflected in the Printsof the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, and the Japonisme in theAustro-Hungarian Monarchy at the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Asiatic Arts.
For further discussion, see Markéta Hánová, ‘Emil Orlik: From Japan’, Journal of Japonisme 3, no. 1(2018): 84–105.
On Stein, see Robert M. Spaulding Jr., Imperial Japan’s Higher Civil Service Examinations (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1967), Chapter 7 (‘Ito and Stein, 1882’), 43–50.
See John House and Mary Anne Stevens (eds.), Post-Impressionism: Cross-Currents in European Painting(London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1979); Lina Bolzoni and Alina Payne (eds.), The Italian Renaissancein the Nineteenth Century: Revision, Revival and Return (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2018).
Among numerous references to Japonisme in Paris, see the cultural event Japonisme 2018, which celebrated the 160th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and France(https://japonismes.org, accessed 21 December 2021).
The preface of the book states: ‘Mr. Murray wishes to point out that this book is written in English by anative of Japan (Okakura, The Ideals of the East, v).
The Japanese translation, entitled Toyo no Riso, was published by Sogensha, Tokyo, in 1938.
‘ASIA, THE MOTHER OF IDEAS: Kakasu Okakura’s Book on the Art of His Native Land and the Idealsof the East’, The New York Times, 25 June 1904. In the second edition of The Ideals of the East, publishedin 1904, the name of the author was spelled in the Japanese order (i.e. family name followed by givenname) as ‘Okakura-Kakuzo’.
Okakura, The Ideals of the East, ix–xxii. For further discussion on Okakura and Sister Nivedita, see John
Rosenfield, ‘Okakura Kakuzo and Margaret Noble (Sister Nivedita): A Brief Episode’, Review of Japanese
Culture and Society 24 (2012): 58–69
Okakura, The Ideals of the East, xx.
For further discussion on Swami Vivekananda and Sister Nivedita, see Jeffery D. Long, ‘Swami Vivekananda and Sister Nivedita: Beacons of Dharma for India and the West’, in Beacons of Dharma: Spiritual
Exemplars for the Modern Age, ed. Christopher Patrick Miller, Michael Reading, and Jeffery D. Long
(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020), 19–39.
Okakura, The Ideals of the East, 83.
For further discussion on the problem of periodisation in art histories of the non-Western world bymeans of religious and dynastic labelling, especially regarding ‘Persian art’, see Yuka Kadoi, ‘The (Re-)
Birth of Ilkhanid Art’, in The Mongol Empire in Global History and Art History, ed. Anne Dunlop (Milanand Cambridge, MA: Officina Libraria and Harvard University Press, 2023), 239–263.
According to Mitter, ‘However persuasive Coomaraswamy’s interpretations may have been it did not
really bring us any closer to the understanding of Indian art. In short, the limitations in Coomaraswamy
arose from the fact that even he ultimately fell back upon European standards for evaluating Indian art,
a problem which had beset his predecessors’ (Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters, 285).
For a recent historiographical reassessment of the Orient oder Rom debate that exploded in Vienna
around 1900, see Ivan Foletti and Francesco Lovino (eds.), Orient oder Rom? History and Receptionof a Historiographical Myth (1901–1970) (Rome: Viella, 2018). In addition to this debate, see Susan
Whitfield’s in-depth studies on the concept of East–West dichotomies and the appropriation of the term
‘Silk Road’: ‘The Perils of Dichotomous Thinking: Ebb and Flow Rather than East and West’, in Marco
Polo and the Encounter of East and West, ed. Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Amilcare Iannucci (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2008), 247–261; ‘The Expanding Silk Road: UNESCO and BRI’, Bulletin of
the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 81 (2020): 23–42.
See Alaister Bonnett, The Idea of the West: Culture, Politics and History (London: Palgrave MacMillan,
2004).
Quoted in Horioka, The Life of Kakuzo, 17–18. His lecture, ‘Modern Problems in Painting’, was published in Howard J. Rogers (ed.), Congress of Arts and Science Universal Exposition, St. Louis, 1904, vol. 3(Boston, MA, and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1906), 663–678. For further discussion,see Miya Elise Mizuta, ‘“Fair Japan”: On Art and War at the Saint Louis World’s Fair, 1904’, Discourse:
Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture 28, no. 1 (2006): 28–52.

The Ideals of the East

41

41.
42.
43.

This information comes from https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/collection/16099, accessed
28 December 2021.
On Nihonga, see Ellen P. Conant, J. Thomas Rimer, and Stephen D. Owyoung, Nihonga, Transcending
the Past: Japanese-Style Painting, 1868–1968 (St. Louis, MO: St. Louis Art Museum, 1995).
See Victoria Weston, Japanese Painting and National Identity: Okakura Tenshin and His Circle (AnnArbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2003).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ali, Wijdan. Modern Islamic Art: Development and Continuity. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida,
1997.
Arai, Emiko. Okakura Tenshin Monogatari. Kanagawa: Kanagawa Shimbun, 2004.
‘ASIA, THE MOTHER OF IDEAS: Kakasu Okakura’s Book on the Art of His Native Land and the Ideals of theEast’. The New York Times. 25 June 1904.
Aydin, Cemil. The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World-Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian
Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Bolzoni, Lina, and Alina Payne, eds. The Italian Renaissance in the Nineteenth Century: Revision, Revival andReturn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018.
Bonnett, Alaister. The Idea of the West: Culture, Politics and History. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004.
Carrier, David. Museum Skepticism: A History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries. New York: Duke University Press, 2006.
Collcutt, Martin. ‘Buddhism: the threat of eradication’. In Japan in Transition: From Tokugawa to Meiji, editedby Marius B. Jansen and Gilbert Rozman, 143–167. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.
Conant, Ellen P. ‘Refractions of the Rising Sun: Japan’s Participation in International Exhibitions, 1862–1910’.
In Japan and Britain: An Aesthetic Dialogue, 1850–1930, edited by Tomoko Sato and Toshio Watanabe,
79–92. London: Lund Humphries, 1991.
Conant, Ellen P., J. Thomas Rimer, and Stephen D. Owyoung. Nihonga, Transcending the Past: Japanese-Style
Painting, 1868–1968. St. Louis, MO: St. Louis Art Museum, 1995.
Diba, Layla S. ‘Muhammad Ghaffari: The Persian Painter of Modern Life’. Iranian Studies 45, no. 5 (2012):
645–659.
Eldem, Edhem. ‘Making Sense of Osman Hamdi Bey and His Paintings’. Muqarnas 29 (2012): 339–383.
Foletti, Ivan, and Francesco Lovino, eds. Orient oder Rom? History and Reception of a Historiographical Myth(1901–1970). Rome: Viella, 2018.
Hánová, Markéta. ‘Emil Orlik: From Japan’. Journal of Japonisme 3, no. 1 (2018): 84–105.
Horioka, Yasuko. The Life of Kakuzo: Author of The Book of Tea. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1963.
House, John, and Mary Anne Stevens, eds. Post-Impressionism: Cross-Currents in European Painting. London:
Royal Academy of Arts, 1979.
Itoh, Mayumi. Globalization of Japan: Japanese Sakoku Mentality and U.S. Efforts to Open Japan. New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1998.
Inaga, Shigemi. ‘A.K. Coomaraswamy and Japan: A Tentative Overview’. In Culture as Power: Buddhist Heritage
and the Indo-Japanese Dialogue, edited by Madhu Bhalla, 109–131. London: Routledge, 2020.
Josephson, Jason Ānanda. The Invention of Religion in Japan. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Kadoi, Yuka. ‘The (Re-)Birth of Ilkhanid Art’. In The Mongol Empire in Global History and Art History, edited byAnne Dunlop, 239–263 Milan and Cambridge, MA: Officina Libraria and Harvard University Press, 2023.
Kadoi, Yuka. ‘Embracing Islam: Okakura Tenshin at the Limits of His Alternative Orientalism’. Journal of Transcultural Studies 13, nos. 1-2 (2022): 56-75.
Ketelaar, James Edward. Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1990.
Long, Jeffery D. ‘Swami Vivekananda and Sister Nivedita: Beacons of Dharma for India and the West’. In Beacons of Dharma: Spiritual Exemplars for the Modern Age, edited by Christopher Patrick Miller, Michael
Reading, and Jeffery D. Long, 19–39. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020.
Marra, Michael. Essays on Japan: Between Aesthetics and Literature. Leiden: Brill, 2010.
Meech, Julia, and Gabriel P. Weisberg. Japonisme Comes to America: The Japanese Impact on the Graphic Arts
1876-​1925. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1990.
Mitteau, Arthur. ‘L’universalisme de l’esthétique chez Okakura Kakuzo (dit Tenshin) et Ernest Fenollosa: critique et actualité’. Ebisu: Études japonaises 50 (2013): 95–133.
Mitter, Partha. Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1977.

42

Yuka Kadoi

Mitter, Partha. ‘Rabindranath Tagore and Okakura Tenshin in Calcutta: The Creation of a Regional Asian
Avant-garde Art’. In Arrival Cities: Migrating Artists and New Metropolitan Topographies in the 20th
Century, edited by Burcu Dogramaci, Mareike Hetschold, Laura Karp Lugo, Rachel Lee, and Helene
Roth, 147–158. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2020.
Mizuta, Miya Elise. ‘“Fair Japan”: On Art and War at the Saint Louis World’s Fair, 1904’. Discourse: Journal for
Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture 28, no. 1 (2006): 28–52.
Murai, Noriko, and Yukio Lippit, eds. ‘Beyond Tenshin: Okakura Kakuzo’s Multiple Legacies’. Special issue,
Review of Japanese Culture and Society 24 (2012).
Okakura, Kakasu [sic]. The Ideals of the East: with Special Reference to the Art of Japan. London: John Murray,
1903.
Papelitzky, Elke. ‘A Description and Analysis of the Japanese World Map Bankoku Sōzu in Its Version of 1671
and Some Thoughts on the Sources of the Original Bankoku Sōzu’. Journal of Asian Studies 48, no. 1(2014): 15–59.
Rogers, Howard J., ed. Congress of Arts and Science Universal Exposition, St. Louis, 1904. Vol. 3. Boston, MA, andNew York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1906.
Rosenfield, John. ‘Okakura Kakuzo and Margaret Noble (Sister Nivedita): A Brief Episode’. Review of Japanese
Culture and Society 24 (2012): 58–69.
Shalem, Avinoam. ‘What Do We Mean When We Say “Islamic Art”? A Plea for a Critical Rewriting of theHistory of the Arts of Islam’. Journal of Art Historiography 6 (2012): 1–18.
Spaulding, Robert M., Jr. Imperial Japan’s Higher Civil Service Examinations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967.
Tankha, Brij, ed. Okakura Tenshin and Pan-Asianism: Shadows of the Past. Leiden: Brill, 2008.
Toby, Ronald P. Engaging the Other: ‘Japan’ and Its Alter-Egos, 1550–1850. Leiden: Brill, 2019.
Traeger, Verena. ‘Gustav Klimts ethnografische Sammlung: Chinamode, Japonismus und das Aschanti-Fieber in Wien um 1900’ / Gustav Klimt’s Ethnographic Collection: Chinese Fashion, Japonism and the
Ashanti Craze in Vienna around 1900’. In Gustav Klimt: Jahrhundertkünstler / Gustav Klimt: Artist of
the Century, edited by Hans-Peter Wipplinger and Sandra Tretter, 137–165. Vienna: Leopold Museum,2018.
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Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, edited by B. Harley and David Woodward, 346–477.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Weston, Victoria. Japanese Painting and National Identity: Okakura Tenshin and His Circle. Ann Arbor, MI:
University of Michigan Press, 2003.
Whitfield, Susan. ‘The Perils of Dichotomous Thinking: Ebb and Flow Rather than East and West’. In Marco Poloand the Encounter of East and West, edited by Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Amilcare Iannucci, 247–261.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008.
Whitfield, Susan. ‘The Expanding Silk Road: UNESCO and BRI’. Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 81 (2020): 23–42.
Wieninger, Johannes. Verborgene Impressionen: Japonismus in Wien, 1870–1930. Vienna: Museum of AppliedArts, 1990.
Ziolkowski, Jan M. The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity: Volume 3: The American
Middle Ages. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2018.

The Ideals of the East

43

PICASSO’S MEETING WITH BUDDHA
Tomáš Winter

In autumn 1911, young Czech painters, sculptors, and architects founded theGroup of Fine Artists (Skupina výtvarných umělců) in Prague. Painters Emil Filla(1882–1953), Antonín Procházka (1882–1945), and Vincenc Beneš (1883–1979);
sculptor Otto Gutfreund (1889–1927); architects Pavel Janák (1882–1956) and
Josef Gočár (1880–1945); and, later, art historians Václav Vilém Štech (1885–
1974) and Antonín Matějček (1889–1950) were among the key members of thegroup. Their fascination with French Cubism is reflected in their works.1 The
inspirations for their artworks, however, were much broader, and the members
manifested these influences clearly at the group’s exhibitions, mainly at the third
one. Among the sources of inspiration for their art, Asian art played one the mostimportant roles. The aim of this article is to show how this was reflected at thegroup’s exhibitions and in the texts and publications of the group’s members.

THE FIRST AND SECOND EXHIBITIONSAt the beginning of 1912, the Group of Fine Artists organised their first exhibition,2 which took place at the Municipal House in Prague, as did the group’s follow-up exhibitions. In the exhibition space, designed by Pavel Janák, there werepaintings by Emil Filla, Václav Špála (1885–1946), Josef Čapek (1887–1945), andothers, as well as statues by Otto Gutfreund. The group’s show generally placed
an unusual emphasis on architecture and design, represented by architecturalmodels, tapestry design, furniture, vases, and other everyday objects (such as
lamps, cutlery, and clocks) designed by Pavel Janák, Josef Gočár, Josef Chochol(1880–1956), František Kysela (1881–1941), and others.3
The second exhibition took place in autumn 1912. The core group was
extended to include two former painters from the Osma group (The Eight): Friedrich Feigl (1885–1965) and Willy Nowak (1886–1977). Both of these artists built
on their contacts with German expressionists from the Die Brücke group. In 1911,
Otto Mueller (1874–1930) and his wife, Marie, stayed with Nowak in Mníšek
pod Brdy near Prague for three months, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938)
Picasso’s Meeting with Buddha

45

joined them for two weeks. Mueller and Kirchner also met with Emil Filla and
Bohumil Kubišta (1884–1918); together, they decided to organise an exhibitionin Prague.4 This idea came to fruition at Skupina’s second exhibition, where Die
Brücke was represented by not only Kirchner and Mueller but also Erich Heckel(1883–1970) and Karl Schmidt-Rottluf (1884–1976). Yet some of Skupina’s members were critical of Die Brücke’s works. For example, Josef Čapek reproached
Die Brücke artists for superficial virtuosity, casual execution, and improvisation.5
The Die Brücke artists were featured in the main hall, modified by Josef Gočár tolook like a crystal, a form that resonated with the works by both the Czech andGerman artists.
The second exhibition followed up on the first group show by placing emphasis on architecture, furniture, and other applied art objects. Furniture sets weremade by Prague Art Workshops, founded upon the initiative of the Group ofFine Artists’ architects in May 1912. The workshops aimed to produce furniture
as practical objects with high artistic value. At the exhibition, the individual furniture sets for different purposes (e.g. dining room, sitting room) were placed infour separate spaces, thus evoking actual interiors, complete with paintings on
the walls. Painter Bohumil Kubišta noted this in his review of the exhibition, suggesting that this was a test of how modern paintings could complement modern
furniture in a home’s interior.6 Compared to the group’s first exhibition, the furniture display was more effective and clear because it evoked real rooms of modern
flats and houses. It manifested the group’s efforts to create a complex style thatwas suitable for modern bourgeois interiors. Members of the group connected
this style directly with the formation of society. They repeated the same conceptof the presentation at the Werkbund exhibition in Cologne in May 1914 in a seriesof Prague Art Workshops.
Apart from the German artists, there were other foreign guests showing theirwork at the exhibition. Above the sofa by Josef Gočár, one could see the paintings
by Othon Friesz (1879–1949) (Landscape, undated) and André Derain (1880–
1954) (Motreuil-sur-Mer, 1910 and Cadaqués, 1910). Derain’s works were lent by
the art historian and collector Vincenc Kramář (1877–1960). Another painting
from Kramář’s collection, a small still life by Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), wasadded to the exhibition around 20 October, but it was not included in the catalogue. This was most likely one of Picasso’s 1912 still lifes which Kramář boughtfrom Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. This was the first time Picasso’s original work
had been presented in the Czech milieu. We don’t know why the painting was notpresent from the beginning of the exhibition.7

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Tomáš WinterTHE THIRD EXHIBITION
The third exhibition of the Group of Fine Artists took place in spring 1913.8 The
committee of the group decided on a unique concept: the group’s members would
not exhibit their own works; instead, they would showcase an array of works
of diverse periods and provenances, including European, Asian, and American
works from the Middle Ages to the present. The artists’ decision to exclude theirown works from the exhibition can be understood as an attempt to create a collective artwork – an installation.9 ‘French’ art was represented by forty paintingsand prints by Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque (1882–
1963), André Derain, and Juan Gris (1887–1927). Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler(1884–1979) loaned most of these artworks.10
The section of older European art included casts of Gothic sculptures from
Czech-speaking countries,11 and there were also photographs of two works by
El Greco (ca. 1541–1614) and Rembrandt (1606–1669) as well as several seventeenth-century woodcuts. Folk art was substantially represented at the exhibition, with over fifty reverse glass paintings and several examples of mostly
nineteenth-century religious-themed carvings and ceramics from the private
collections of about twenty lenders.12
The section dedicated to art from outside of Europe had a special place atthe exhibition. It contained painted textiles from Sri Lanka loaned by the painterFigure 1. Exhibition of ‘exotic art’ in the third exhibition of the Group of Fine Artists at the Municipal
House in Prague. 1913. Photo from Umělecký měsíčník 2, 1912–1914. Institute of Art History, Czech
Academy of Sciences.
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47

Otakar Nejedlý (1883–1957), who spent several months on the island in 1909–
1910. An ivory box and a small bronze altar from India were loaned by the son of
the industrialist František Melichar (1842–1907) from Brandýs nad Labem. The
catalogue also lists statuettes of gods from India acquired from Prague physician
František Wachsmann, a gilded bronze sculpture of Buddha from China, and aJapanese wooden figure sculpture from the collection of Václav Jaroslav Klofáč(1868–1942), a member of the Imperial Council (Reichsrat) – the Parliament of
the Cisleithanian part of Austria-Hungary (fig. 1). Thanks to Czech artists’ contacts within the German milieu, it was possible to acquire an African sculpture
from the collection of the painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, although this sculpture turned out to be a forgery.13 Adolf Mikeš (1864–1929), a professor at the
Prague music school, contributed a pre-Columbian stone sculpture. This ‘exotic’
section was complemented with photographs of African sculptures, on loan from
Kahnweiler, and photographs of Indian and Chinese sculptures, on loan from an
unknown person, probably from a member of the group.
In the catalogue introduction, the painter Vincenc Beneš explains this seemingly incoherent mélange of European and non-European artworks of different
periods and styles. He writes about the young artists’ admiration for old artworks‘that address questions of volume, surface, geometric synthesis of form and perceive nature non-optically’.14 Rather than looking for identical sensibilities, theexhibition focused on finding formal parallels. This concept was far-reaching,including Romanesque, Gothic, and Baroque art; African, Oceanic and pre-Columbian art; folk art; and art of the entire ‘Orient’.15

EMIL FILLA’S VIEW
The same concept is visible in Umělecký měsíčník (Art Monthly), the journal published by the Group of Fine Artists from October 1911 to spring 1914. Apartfrom reproductions of European paintings by Old Masters and modern artists,
the magazine’s first volume contained photographs of objects from Persia, China,
Japan, India, Egypt, and the Pacific.16 This was essentially an anthropologicalapproach: the journal included a mixture of art objects from different continents
and periods. There was not only ‘Western’ art but also works that the membersof the group generally, vaguely, and uncritically identified as ‘oriental’ and ‘exotic’art: Asian, African, Oceanic, and pre-Columbian art.
This approach is exemplified by Emil Filla’s study titled ‘Život a dílo’ (Life andWork),17 accompanied by illustrations of European, Egyptian, Asian, and Oceanic
art that were shown in the following sequence: the Egyptian statue of Ramses II
in Luxor, a statue from Japan, an Indian sculptural figure of a kneeling monk, afragment of a relief from Egypt, a Chinese statue of Bodhidharma (or Tamo), a
wooden figure mo’ai kavakava from Easter Island, and August Rodin’s sculpture
Perseus and Meduse. This sequence corresponds to the general character of the48

Tomáš Winterarticle. Filla searches for common features among the different works from allover the world. He discusses the sense of motion in surface planes in Baroque,
Chinese, and Indian art, and he defines parallels between the linear treatment
of decoration in Romanesque tympanums and in Chinese and Japanese statues.
To do so, he employs Alois Riegl’s specific concept of Kunstwollen, as ‘a will toart’, founded on similar premises and existing in geographically and temporally
distant regions. Such ‘will’, according to Filla, ‘can and necessarily must lead tothe same results’.18
Ideologically, Filla was thus able to combine art styles of different periods andlocations and to justify this alliance through a methodological approach basedon a specific application of Riegl’s Kunstwollen and formal analysis of particular
works. In Filla’s view, the form of an artwork is closely connected to its contents.
The form expresses its creator and the creator’s life. He considered the form to bean ‘expression of life itself ’, as Vojtěch Lahoda noted.19 Filla tried to find a similar
creative power in different styles and epochs. Chinese, Japanese, and the whole of
Asian art could be part of such a specific concept, together with African, Oceanic,
Native American, and European art, including folk art.20

RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE
A comparison of the group’s approach to Asian art with the Russian avant-garde
could help define the character of the group’s creative effort in more detail. In
1913, the Target exhibition was held in Moscow. It presented works by Mikhail
Larionov (1881–1964), Natalia Goncharova (1881–1962), Kazimir Malevich(1879–1935), Marc Chagall (1887–1985), and others. In the introduction to thecatalogue, Larionov claimed:
We aspire towards the East and direct our attention towards national art. We
protest against the servile subordination to the West which has vulgarized
our own forms and those of the East, has reduced everything to a uniform
level, and has delivered them back to us.21
Although the concept of the East was not precisely defined by Russian avantgarde artists, it is possible to detect its connection with Asia. When they spoke
about art of the East, these artists meant Asian art generally.
Larionov, in accordance with Goncarova and Aleksandr Shevchenko (1883–
1948), considered the East to be the geographic source of all art, including Western art. In the Primitivism manifesto, Shevchenko connected this movementwith Eastern art and claimed that ‘the whole of man’s culture, generally speaking,derived from Asia and not vice versa, as some assert’.22 Shevchenko therefore did
not see any reason to appropriate Western art, which he perceived as more orless unoriginal. His Neo-Primitivism was supposed to derive above all from Asia
Picasso’s Meeting with Buddha

49and its ‘barbarian’ art. He only considered Western art as a sort of supplement ofEastern origin with special formal qualities which he understood as essentiallyEuropean.

CZECH INTERPRETATION OF ASIAN ART
The point of view of the Russian avant-garde was completely different from thatof the members of the Group of Fine Artists. Czech artists didn’t speak about an
opposition between Asian and European art. On the contrary, they saw world
culture as a whole. Their approach was not nationalistic but global. They felt thatthey were a part of one culture, including various areas and periods. They felt thatthey were able to derive inspiration from all over the world without ideologicallimitations. The main factor was art quality, connected with a category of authenticity and originality. It was important that the artists saw and explained an older
art through the prism of their contemporary creative effort, in fact through theprism of Cubism, as Vojtěch Lahoda noted. Lahoda described this way following
Filla’s explanation of medieval art:
Filla writes here [in the article ‘Život a dílo’] that Gothic art, in the Christianview, destroys its physical existence, merges with ‘the creator who is embodied in all things’, i.e. it objectifies ‘its subjective being by disappearing in theuniverse’. In order to understand Filla’s way of thinking and his relation of
the old masters to Cubism, the term Gothic art must be substituted for theterm ‘Cubist artist’. Filla rarely writes explicitly about Cubism, he always
explains it with other terms or styles.23
It’s also possible to document this point with Vincenc Beneš’s article on Japanese
woodcuts published in Umělecký měsíčník in 1913. The text was a review of theexhibition of the Japanese woodblock prints from the collection of Benedictine
priest Sigismund Bouška (1867–1942). The show took place in Prague and Brnoin the same year. Beneš criticised Japanese prints because of their decorative technique and lack of three-dimensional qualities. Japan was, in his eyes, merely acultural province of Chinese. For that reason, he preferred Chinese art generally
and he was also able to describe the relation of the group’s members to Chinese
works of art from their own historical position. Beneš claimed that the basis forthe relationship to Chinese art originates froman analogous manner of expression through abstract form, the cancellationof the beholder’s objective perspective, the shift of the points of view to thecentre of action, frequently also the way abstract light is employed, andabove all, the character of motion and ethereal lightness, so symptomatic of
the Oriental spirit (fig. 2).24
50

Tomáš WinterFigure 2. Landscape with Palace attributed to Li Zhaodao. Tang dynasty (675–758). Photo from Umělecký
měsíčník 2, 1912–1914. Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences.

It’s clear that these are qualities that Beneš derived from his own efforts as well as
those of the whole group. There were other important attributes in Cubist paintings, such as monumentality, subordination to a unified whole, a strong senseof spatiality, and an attempt at a firm grasp of visual expression, which Benešalso discusses in relation to Chinese painting (fig. 3). I don’t think it is importantwhether Chinese art has this quality, because generally it is not possible to determine. It’s more important that Beneš and other artists could see Chinese art in
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51

Figure 3. Embankment by Vincenc Beneš. 1912. Oil on canvas. Destroyed by the artist. Photo from Umělecký
měsíčník 2, 1912–1914. Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences.

close connection to their Cubist works. In their opinion Chinese art provided afoundation for their own contemporary art, especially for the formal qualities of
Cubism. Chinese art was not explained as less valuable, ‘primitive’, or ‘degenerate’;
there was no explicit question of conquering it.
However, it is true that the explanation of Chinese art, invalid criticism ofJapanese art, and the approach to non-European art generally were distorted by
the views of the group’s members. From the critical viewpoint of postcolonial
theory, we can speak about appropriation and, moreover, about the abuse orrape of original Asian culture because the objects were removed (ideologicallyand physically) from their original context and used for the specific purposes ofCzech modern artists, who felt that these objects were representatives of modern
European culture.

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Tomáš WinterANALOGIESIn the way the sources for new modern art were presented at the group’s third
exhibition, we could see some analogies in several European exhibitions before
WWI. The Oriental Exhibition was held from April to May 1911 at the House ofArtists in Budapest. It contained Oceanic and African sculptures, Persian miniatures, Japanese prints, and terracottas and bronzes from ancient China, Tibet,
Cambodia, and India. According to Jean-Louis Paudrat, the objects of non-European art ‘were presented as not only equaling those of the classical tradition inartistic value but even as the leaven for the renewal of contemporary sculpture
and painting’.25 However, there was no modern European art at the exhibition.
It was the same in the case of other two exhibitions: the exhibition of Asian andEgyptian art, ľart nègre, and Aztec Art at the Galeries Levesque in Paris in 191326
and the exhibition Statuary in Wood by African Savages: The Root of Modern Art
in the gallery of Photo-Secession group at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York in 1914.27
When the German group Blaue Reiter was preparing its first exhibition,28 thepainter Franz Marc (1880–1916) wanted to include the reverse paintings on glass
together with the artworks of the group members.29 In the end the reverse paintings did not appear in the exhibition; however, the group members didn’t reject
the idea of a direct confrontation of their work with folk art when shown publicly.
The second exhibition was held from mid-February to early April 1912 in the
Munich-based gallery run by Hans Goltz (1873–1927) and focused on drawing
and printmaking. In addition to works by the core members of the group and theirguests – Pablo Picasso, Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Kazimir Malevich,and others – there was a series of eight Russian folk prints there, so-called lubki.
Lubki also played a significant role in the circle around Larionov, who had
his own collection of these prints. In February 1913 he lent the collection for an
exhibition prepared by architect Nikolai Dmitrievich Vinogradov (1885–1980) in
the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.30 In addition to otherobjects from Larionov’s collection – two African sculptures, among other things– there were also bronze and copper icons from the property of Natalia Goncharova and several of her own studies for contemporary Russian lubki, based on
folk prints. Larionov wrote an introduction for the exhibition catalogue, which heused again in the catalogue of lubki and original Russian icons, prepared on his
own in March 1913 in the art salon on Bolshaya Dmitrovka.31
With regard to Picasso and Braque, we probably couldn’t find any exhibition
before WWI in which non-European art was displayed together with their paintings. The only exception was Prague’s exhibitions. Although Picasso was inspiredby a wide range of non-European sources,32 he had no interest in presenting his
own works together with these objects. The first exhibition containing Picasso’s
painting together with ľart nègre was the first exhibition of association Lyre andPalette, founded by poets Blaise Cendrars (1887–1961) and Jean Cocteau (1889–
1963) and Chilean artist Manuel Ortiz de Zárate (1887–1946).33 It took place inPicasso’s Meeting with Buddha

53

Émile Lejeune’s courtyard studio at 6 rue Huyghens in Paris from 19 November to 5 December 1916. Presented there were paintings by Ortiz, paintings anddrawings by Polish-born French painter Moïse Kisling (1891–1953), a drawing by
Henri Matisse (1869–1954), two still lifes by Picasso, fifteen canvases and designs
by Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920), and twenty-five sculptures, masks, fetishes,
and idols from Africa and Oceania.34

CONCLUSION
The meeting of Buddha and Picasso at the third exhibition of the Group of Fine
Artists in Prague in 1913 was very special. After two exhibitions presenting theworks of the group’s members as the foundation of a new style, the artists omitted their own works and decided to present only the sources of inspiration for
their art. There was French contemporary art represented by Picasso, Braque,and Derain as an example of the most current art, on the one hand, and older
European and non-European art, on the other hand. The Czech artists consideredthese works to be a source for their new language of art, a new artistic style. They
didn’t generally prefer Asian art to African sculptures or folk reverse paintings tomedieval art. All sources stood on the same level, and all of them were important. The artists didn’t want to copy them mechanically, but they tried to find thebasic formal principles that they could transfer to their own works. They didn’t
understand their own art as part of a national or regional style but as a part ofinternational modernism, whose centre was not only in Paris but also in Prague.
From mid-February to 19 April 1914, the Group of Fine Artists organised
their fourth exhibition in Prague. The show’s concept followed on from group’s
second exhibition and included works by both members and guests. Modern art
from abroad was represented by Pablo Picasso (two paintings from the collection of Vincenc Kramář and two prints), etchings by Georges Braque and André
Derain on loan from Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, two works by Max Pechstein, andtwo paintings by Edvard Munch purchased from his 1905 Prague exhibition.35
The show also contained five wooden figure sculptures from the Belgian Congoand Cameroon, probably lent by Vincenc Kramář, who is known to have owned
African sculptures in this period.36 It’s clear that the presentation of non-European art was not as extensive as it was at the third exhibition. Nevertheless, thebasic aim was similar: to present the new Czech art in the broader context of otherartworks, in the context of its sources. Spectators could see Picasso’s works next
to Filla’ paintings or African sculptures together with statues by Otto Gutfreund.
Czech Cubism was presented as part of a modern international art movement inwhich the non-European played an important role.

54

Tomáš WinterNOTES
1.

2.
3.

4.

5.
6.

7.
8.
9.

10.
11.

12.
13.
14.
15.

16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.

For the history of the Group of Fine Artists, see especially Miroslav Lamač, Osma a Skupina výtvarných
umělců 1907–1917 [The Eight and the Group of Fine Artists] (Prague: Odeon, 1988); Vojtěch Lahoda,Český kubismus [Czech Cubism] (Prague: Brána, 1996); Pavel Liška, Jiří Švestka, and Tomáš Vlček, eds.,
Czech Cubism 1909–1925: Art, Architecture, Design (Prague: i3 CZ and Modernista, 2006).
The exhibition was open from 5 January to March 1912.
See more in Tomáš Winter, ‘Maison cubiste po česku’ [Maison cubiste in Bohemia], in 1912. 100 let
od otevření Obecního domu v Praze [1912. 100 Years from the Opening of Municipal House in Prague],ed. Otto M. Urban and Filip Wittlich (Řevnice and Prague: Arbor vitae and Municipal House, 2012),
100–103.
Marie Rakušanová, ‘Velké míjení, nebo nenápadná rezonance? Návštěva Otty Muellera, Marie Muellerové a Ernsta Ludwiga Kirchnera v roce 1911 v Čechách’ [Great Passing by or Furtive Resonance? The
Visit of Otto Mueller, Maria Mueller and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Bohemia in 1911], Umění/Art 54(2006): 142–161.
Josef Čapek, ‘II. výstava Skupiny výtvarných umělců’ [2nd Exhibition of the Group of Fine Artists],
Lumír 41, no. 1 (1912–1913): 45.
Bohumil Kubišta, ‘Druhá výstava Skupiny výtvarných umělců v Obecním domě (1912)’ [The Second
Exhibition of the Group of Fine Artists in the Municipal House (1912)], in Předpoklady slohu. Úvahy –kritiky – polemiky [Assumptions of Style. Considerations – Reviews – Polemics], ed. František Kubišta(Prague: Otto Girgal, 1947), 93–95.
See more in Luise Mahler and Anna Jozefacka, ‘Cubism Goes East: Kahnweiler’s Central European
Network of Agents and Collectors’, in Years of Disarray, 1908–1928, Avant-Gardes in Central Europe, ed.
Karel Srp (Řevnice and Olomouc: Arbor vitae societas and Museum of Art, 2018), 56–69.
Anna Masaryková, ‘III. výstava Skupiny výtvarných umělců’ [3rd Exhibition of the Group of Fine Artists], Umění/Art 30 (1982): 379–381.
Tomáš Winter, ‘Proti individualismu! Avantgarda jako kolektivní práce’ [Againts Individualism! The
Avant-Garde as a Collective Work], in Tvůrce jako předmět dějin umění. Pozice autora po jeho ‘smrti’[The Creator as a Subject of Art History. The Position of the Author after His ‘Death’], ed. Petr Jindra
and Radim Vondráček (Prague: Artefactum, 2020), 111–117.
Mahler and Jozefacka ‘Cubism Goes East: Kahnweiler’s Central European Network of Agents and Collectors’, 56–69.
Milada Studničková, ‘Kopie jako iniciační artefakt. Svorník s tváří Krista kostela sv. Gotharda ve Slaném’[Copy as an Artefact of Initiation. The Keystone with Vera Icon in the St. Gothard Church in Slaný],in Rembrandtova tramvaj. Kubismus, tradice a ‘jiné’ umění [Rembrandt’s Tram. Cubism, Tradition, and‘Other’ Art], ed. Tomáš Winter et al. (Pilsen: West Bohemian Gallery, 2015), 56–67.
Tomáš Winter, ‘A Fascination with Folk Art: Modernism and the Avant-Garde in Munich, Prague andMoscow around 1913’, Umění/Art 62 (2016): 240–253.
Tomáš Winter, ‘Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Negerplastik and the Mistake of Czech Cubists,’ Umění/Art 61(2013): 356–361.
Vincenc Beneš, [Untitled introduction], in Skupina výtvarných umělců. III. výstava [The Group of Fine
Artists. 3rd Exhibition] (Prague: The Group of Fine Artists, 1913), n.p. (exh. cat.).
Tomáš Winter, ‘The Group of Fine Artists and Primitivism in the Czech Lands’, Centropa 11, no. 1(2011): 19–33; Tomáš Winter, ‘Chinese Art and Czech Modernism’, in Masters of 20th-Century Chinese Ink Painting from Collections of the National Gallery in Prague, ed. Michaela Pejčochová (Prague:
National Gallery, 2008), 38–54.
Umělecký měsíčník [Art Monthly] 1, 1911–1912.
Emil Filla, ‘Život a dílo’ [Life and Work], Umělecký měsíčník [Art Monthly] 1 (1911–1912): 314–328.
Filla, ‘Život a dílo’, 326.
See more in Vojtěch Lahoda, Emil Filla (Prague: Academia, 2007), 125.
See more in Vojtěch Lahoda, ‘Rok 1912 Emila Filly: svědectví deníku’ [Emil Filla’s Year 1912: A Testimony of His Diary], Umění/Art 36 (1988): 226–333.
Mikhail Larionov, [Untitled introduction], in Mishen [Target] (Moscow: Target 1913), quoted in John
E. Bowlt, ‘Mikhail Larionov and the Primitive’, Experiment I (1995): 169. Translated by John E. Bowlt.
Aleksandr Shevchenko, Neoprimitivism: Its Theory, Its Potentials, Its Achievements (Moscow: n.p., 1913),
quoted in Bowlt, Russian Art of Avant-Garde, 48. Translated by John E. Bowlt.
Lahoda, Emil Filla, 125. See also Lahoda’s explanation of Vincenc Kramář’s interpretation of old European masters from the Baroque period: Vojtěch Lahoda, ‘Silnice kubismus Vincence Kramáře, zastávka
jménem John Constable a poetika dějin umění’ [Vincenc Kramář’s Cubism Road, a Stop Named John

Picasso’s Meeting with Buddha

55

24.
25.

26.
27.
28.
29.
30.

31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.

Constable, and the Poetics of Art History], in V mužském mozku. Sborník k 70. narozeninám Petra
Wittlicha [In a Male Mind. Miscellany on the Occasion of the 70th Anniversary of Petr Wittlich], ed.
Lenka Bydžovská and Roman Prahl (Dolní Břežany: Scriptorium, 2002), 19–20.
Vincenc Beneš, ‘Japonský dřevoryt’ [Woodblock Printing in Japan], Umělecký měsíčník [Art Monthly]
2 (1912–1914): 147.
Jean-Louis Paudrat, ‘From Africa’, in ‘Primitivism’ in the 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal andthe Modern, vol. 1, ed. William Rubin (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1984), 148 (exh. cat.). See
also Krisztina Passuth, ‘Keleti kiâllitâs a mûvészhâzban’ [Oriental Exhibition at the House of Artists],Mûvészettôrtèneti Èrtesitô [Bulletin of Art History], no. 1–2 (2001): 85–102.
The exhibition took place from 16 May to 15 June 1913. See Paudrat, ‘From Africa’, 152.
The exhibition took place from 3 November to 8 December 1914. See Paudrat, ‘From Africa’, 153.
It took place at the turn of 1911 and 1912 in Thannhauser Modern Gallery in Munich.
Franz Marc, ‘An Wassily Kandinsky’ [To Wassily Kandinsky], in Der Blaue Reiter. Dokumente einer geistiger Bewegung [Blaue Reiter. Documents of an Intellectual Movement], ed. Andreas Huneke (Leipzig:
Reclam, 1986), 164–165.
E. B. Ovsyannikova, ‘Larionov i Goncharova. Materialy archiva N. D. Vinogradova’ [Larionov and Goncharova. Files from N.D. Vinogradov’s Archives], in N. S. Goncharova i M. F. Larionov: Issledovania i
publikacii [N.S. Goncharova and M.F. Larionov: Research and Publications] (Moscow: Nauka, 2001),
55–72; Sarah Warren, Mikhail Larionov and the Cultural Politics of Late Imperial Russia (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 53–55.
Vystavka ikonopisnych podlinnikov i lubkov, organizovannaya M. F. Larionovym [Exhibition of Icons
and Folk Prints Organised by M.F. Larionov] (Moscow: Artistic salon Bolshaya Dmitrovka, 1913) (exh.
cat.).
See Bärbel Küster, Matisse and Picasso als Kulturreisende: Primitivismus und Anthropologie um 1900
[Matisse and Picasso as Cultural Travellers: Primitivism and Anthropology around 1900] (Berlin:
Akademie Verlag 2003).
See Dan Franck, Bohemian Paris: Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse and the Birth of Modern Art (New York:
Grove Press, 1998), 259–260; Claude Leroy, ‘Lyre et Palette 1916–1919’ [Lyre and Palette 1916–1919],
Feuille de routes [Roadmap], no. 53 (2015): 173–175.
Paudrat, ‘From Africa’, 154. See: https://transatlanticencounters.rrchnm.org/items/show/5222 (accessed
10 September 2023).
The now missing Student Grove, on loan from the poet Tereza Koseová, and Dance on the Shore, thenowned by the sculptor Stanislav Sucharda. The Dance in the Shore is now the property of the National
Gallery in Prague.
Vojtěch Lahoda and Olga Uhrová, eds., Vincenc Kramář. Od starých mistrů v Picassovi [Vincenc Kramář.
From the Old Masters to Picasso] (Prague: National Gallery, 2000), 264.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beneš, Vincenc. [‘Untitled introduction’.] In Skupina výtvarných umělců. III. Výstava [Group of Fine Artists. 3rd
Exhibition], n.p. Prague: Group of Fine Artists, 1913. Exhibition catalogue.
Beneš, Vincenc. ‘Japonský dřevoryt’ [Japanese Woodblock Prints]. Umělecký měsíčník [Art Monthly] 2 (1912–1914): 146–147.
Bowlt, John E., ed. Russian Art of Avant-Garde. Theory and Criticism 1902–1934. New York: Viking Press, 1976.
Bowlt, John E. ‘Mikhail Larionov and the Primitive’. Experiment 1 (1995): 169–181.
Čapek, Josef. ‘II. výstava Skupiny výtvarných umělců’ [2nd Exhibition of the Group of Fine Artists]. Lumír 41,
no. 1 (1912–1913): 44–48.
Filla, Emil. ‘Život a dílo’ [Life and Work]. Umělecký měsíčník [Art Monthly] 1 (1911–1912): 314–328.
Franck, Dan. Bohemian Paris: Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse and the Birth of Modern Art. New York: Grove Press,
1998.
Huneke, Andreas, ed. Der Blaue Reiter. Dokumente einer geistiger Bewegung [Blaue Reiter. Documents of anIntellectual Movement]. Leipzig: Reclam, 1986.
Kubišta, Bohumil. ‘Druhá výstava Skupiny výtvarných umělců v Obecním domě (1912)’ [The Second Exhibition of the Group of Fine Artists in the Municipal House (1912)]. In Předpoklady slohu. Úvahy – kritiky– polemiky [Assumptions of Style. Considerations – Reviews – Polemics], edited by František Kubišta,
93–95. Prague: Otto Girgal, 1947.

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Tomáš WinterKüster, Bärbel. Matisse and Picasso als Kulturreisende: Primitivismus und Anthropologie um 1900 [Matisse andPicasso as Cultural Travellers: Primitivism and Anthropology around 1900]. Berlin: Akademie Verlag,
2003.
Lahoda, Vojtěch, and Olga Uhrová, eds. Vincenc Kramář. Od starých mistrů v Picassovi [Vincenc Kramář. From
the Old Masters to Picasso]. Prague: National Gallery 2000.
Lahoda, Vojtěch. ‘Rok 1912 Emila Filly: svědectví deníku’ [Emil Filla’s Year 1912: A Testimony of His Diary].
Umění/Art 36 (1988): 226–333.
Lahoda, Vojtěch. Český kubismus [Czech Cubism]. Prague: Brána, 1996.
Lahoda, Vojtěch. Emil Filla. Prague: Academia, 2007.
Lahoda, Vojtěch. ‘Silnice kubismus Vincence Kramáře, zastávka jménem John Constable a poetika dějin umění’[Vincenc Kramář’s Cubism Road, a Stop Named John Constable, and the Poetics of Art History]. In V
mužském mozku. Sborník k 70. narozeninám Petra Wittlicha [In a Male Mind. Miscellany on the Occasion of the 70th Anniversary of Petr Wittlich], edited by Lenka Bydžovská and Roman Prahl, 17–36.
Dolní Břežany: Scriptorium, 2002.
Lamač, Miroslav. Osma a Skupina výtvarných umělců 1907–1917 [The Eight and the Group of Fine Artists].
Prague: Odeon, 1988.
Leroy, Claude. ‘Lyre et Palette 1916–1919’ [Lyre and Palette 1916–1919]. Feuille de routes [Roadmap], no. 53(2015): 173–175.
Liška, Pavel, Jiří Švestka, and Tomáš Vlček, eds. Czech Cubism 1909–1925: Art, Architecture, Design. Prague: i3
CZ and Modernista. 2006.
Mahler, Luise, and Anna Jozefacka. ‘Cubism Goes East: Kahnweiler’s Central European Network of Agents andCollectors’. In Years of Disarray, 1908–1928: Avant-Gardes in Central Europe, edited by Karel Srp, 56–69.
Řevnice and Olomouc: Arbor vitae societas and Museum of Art, 2018.
Masaryková, Anna. ‘III. výstava Skupiny výtvarných umělců’ [3rd Exhibition of the Group of Fine Artists].
Umění/Art 30 (1982): 379–381.
Ovsyannikova, E. B. ‘Larionov i Goncharova. Materialy archiva N. D. Vinogradova’ [Larionov and Goncharova.
Files from N.D. Vinogradov’s Archives]. In N. S. Goncharova i M. F. Larionov: Issledovania i publikacii[N. S. Goncharova and M. F. Larionov: Research and Publications], 55–72. Moscow: Nauka, 2001.
Passuth, Krisztina. ‘Keleti kiâllitâs a mûvészhâzban’ [Oriental Exhibition at the House of Artists]. Mûvészettôrtèneti Èrtesitô [Bulletin of Art History], no. 1–2 (2001): 85–102.
Rakušanová, Marie. ‘Velké míjení, nebo nenápadná rezonance? Návštěva Otty Muellera, Marie Muellerové aErnsta Ludwiga Kirchnera v roce 1911 v Čechách’ [Great Passing By or Furtive Resonance? The Visitof Otto Mueller, Maria Mueller and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Bohemia in 1911]. Umění/Art 54 (2006):
142–161.
Rubin, William, ed. ‘Primitivism’ in the 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern. Vol. 1. New York:
Museum of Modern Art, 1984. Exhibition catalogue.
Umělecký měsíčník [Art Monthly] 1, 1911–1912.
Vystavka ikonopisnych podlinnikov i lubkov, organizovannaya M. F. Larionovym [Exhibition of Icons and Folk
Prints Organised by M.F. Larionov]. Moscow: Artistic salon Bolshaya Dmitrovka, 1913. Exhibition
catalogue.
Warren, Sarah. Mikhail Larionov and the Cultural Politics of Late Imperial Russia. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.
Winter, Tomáš et al., ed. Rembrandtova tramvaj. Kubismus, tradice a ‘jiné’ umění [Rembrandt’s Tram. Cubism,
Tradition, and ‘Other’ Art]. Pilsen: West Bohemian Gallery, 2015.
Winter, Tomáš. ‘Chinese Art and Czech Modernism.’ In Masters of 20th-Century Chinese Ink Painting from
Collections of the National Gallery in Prague, edited by Michaela Pejčochová, 38–54. Prague: National
Gallery, 2008.
Winter, Tomáš. ‘Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Negerplastik and the Mistake of Czech Cubists’. Umění/Art 61 (2013):
356–361.
Winter, Tomáš. ‘Maison cubiste po česku’ [Maison cubiste in Bohemia]. In 1912. 100 let od otevření Obecního
domu v Praze [1912. 100 Years from the Opening of Municipal House in Prague], edited by Otto M.
Urban and Filip Wittlich, 100–110. Řevnice and Prague: Arbor vitae and Municipal House, 2012.
Winter, Tomáš. ‘Proti individualismu! Avantgarda jako kolektivní práce’ [Against Individualism! The AvantGarde as a Collective Work]. In Tvůrce jako předmět dějin umění. Pozice autora po jeho ‘smrti’ [TheCreator as a Subject of Art History. The Position of the Author after His ‘Death’], edited by Petr Jindra
and Radim Vondráček, 111–117. Prague: Artefactum, 2020.
Winter, Tomáš. ‘The Group of Fine Artists and Primitivism in the Czech Lands’. Centropa 11, no. 1 (2011):
19–33.
Winter, Tomáš. ‘A Fascination with Folk Art: Modernism and the Avant-Garde in Munich, Prague and Moscow
around 1913’. Umění/Art 62 (2016): 240–253.

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COLLECTIONS AND COLLECTORS,NETWORKS AND DISPLAY

TWENTIETH-CENTURY CULTURAL POLITICS
AND NETWORKS: THE GENESIS OF THE ASIANART COLLECTION AT THE NATIONAL GALLERYIN PRAGUE*
Markéta Hánová

Within the historical context of museum collecting of Asian art in the Central
European region, a prestigious collection department was established in the second half of the 20th century – within the historical territory of Bohemia, Moravia
and Silesia (also known as the Czech Lands) – focusing on the art of Asian andIslamic cultures, which was housed at the National Gallery in Prague (NGP).
From a methodological perspective, we are embarking upon a historiographicalanalysis of the origin of this new state collection, which assesses not only issues
related to the function of the museum as a tool for legitimising collections, butalso those concerning the art historical field of Asian and Islamic cultures within
the context of the social and political conditions of post-war Czechoslovakia.1
It is necessary to mention as an introduction that the department – at the time
named the Department of Oriental Art – was founded in 1951.2 This occurred not
only within a different cultural and political context and with a different social
demand, but also with a different collection concept in comparison with older
museum institutions in the Czech Lands that housed art collections of Asian
provenance. Specifically we can mention the Náprstek Museum in Prague, withcollection acquisitions dating back to the 1860s; it was nationalised in 1932 andsubsequently, in 1943, became a subsidiary of the National Museum in Prague.3
Alongside this museum, in the second half of the 19th century, further museum
collections, focusing on artefacts of Asian provenance and other subject matters,
were established under the influence of international exhibitions in London (1862),
Paris (1867) and Vienna (1873), as well as the Arts & Crafts movement. In the
Czech Lands, which from 1526 until 1918 were subjugated to the Austro Habsburg
empire, interest was awakened in the collection of artistic products of Asian andIslamic cultures and the founding of applied arts museums especially as a result
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of the Vienna Weltausstellung in 1873. Following the model of the Imperial Royal
Austrian Museum of Art and Industry (Kunstgewerbemuseum, today’s MAK),4 a
series of non-state museums were established featuring collections of Asian art,such as the Moravian Industrial Museum in Brno (1873),5 the North BohemianMuseum in Liberec (1873), or the Museum of Applied Arts in Prague (1884).6
With regard to their significance, museum institutions functioned as a platform
for disseminating artistic values and education, thereby developing a territorial
and national identity, a modern society, and, last but not least, also industry.
When reflecting upon the establishment of a new collection department at the
NGP, it is therefore essential to consider the broader historical context and thesocio-economic circumstances of inter-war Czechoslovakia. These factors set thestage for the founding not only of another museum collection, but also for the establishment and development of a field of art history focusing on Asian and Islamic
cultures in the post-war period in Czechoslovakia. Thanks to the close co-operation between orientalists and art historians working in state administration, as wellas museum and monument care institutions, the academic sphere, and schools,a new disciplinary platform was established. This platform enjoyed a network ofcontacts with the art scene of the time, which the NGP systematically cultivated.

THE FIRST ACQUISITIONS AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF THE CULTURAL POLICY
OF THE FIRST CZECHOSLOVAK REPUBLIC
Within the framework of the political and economic strategy of inter-war Czecho­slovakia7 an important theme was its economic and cultural orientation towards
the geographical and geopolitical territory of the Orient.8 The term ‘Orient’ was defacto adopted from the vocabulary of European historiography, free from the political connotation of colonial expansion by Czechoslovakia.9 In Masarykův slovník
naučný (Masaryk’s Encyclopaedia), the term ‘Orient’ is geographically delineatedas the region extending from the eastern Mediterranean, encompassing Turkey,
Syria, and Egypt, to the eastern parts of the Middle East.10 Nonetheless, scientificand economic interests actively expanded through Central to East Asia, and theconcept of the Orient gradually came to include these regions as well.
One of the tools deployed for commercial expansion involved organisingexhibitions of Asian art. They were hosted by First Czechoslovak Republic institutions such as the company Pražské vzorkové veletrhy (Prague Sample Fairs) inthe building of the Trade Fair Palace (opened 1929), the Czechoslovak-JapaneseChamber of Commerce (established 1928), and the Japanese Section of the Oriental Institute (established 1933).11 These institutions systematically cultivatedcommercial and cultural contacts, which supported exports of Czech firms toEast Asia. Incidentally, the Oriental Institute, which was founded in 192212 by
the renowned orientalist Alois Musil (1868–1944),13 received financial and political support from President Masaryk, who had been engaged in an endeavour
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to develop cultural and political relations with Japan since the end of the FirstWorld War.14 Thanks to the establishment of the Czechoslovak-Japanese Chamber of Commerce in 1928, which represented prominent enterprises and cultural
institutions including the Oriental Institute, Count Gerolf Coudenhove-Kalergi15
cultivated cultural contacts as a member of its committee.
At the turn of 1930, the Trade Fair Palace became the venue for the first exhibition of Asian art aimed at fostering commercial interest in Asian destinations.
This was the grandiose Exhibition of Art from Outside Europe16 from the private
collection of the celebrated Czech collector and writer Joe Hloucha (1881–1952).17
The exhibition was opened with a speech by Václav Boháč (1874–1935), the thenpresident of the Trade Fair Palace, relating to the programme of Czechoslovak
exports to East Asia:
In the East I see our salvation. We must therefore welcome all that is associated with the East. We ourselves must find our own path there. The birth of ayoung China is just beginning, and Siam, Japan and other Eastern states are
gaining importance for our industry. We must take advantage of this opportune moment for us and establish both friendly and business contacts with
the East, so that we may become firmly anchored there in the future. We
are embarking on our first auspicious beginnings with Japan, which shallofficially come to our country in the spring as an exhibitor. This exhibition
also is important, and I therefore wish it every success in awakening a love
for the East.18
Evidently it made little difference that the exhibits originated from a private collection, not to mention the fact that they also featured art works from Asia as
well as Africa (fig. 1).19 In short, Hloucha’s exhibition fit in with the state cultural
policy, which was also followed by the spring trade fair of Japanese firms from theart export industry.20
Hloucha primarily intended to make money from his collection, which he had
amassed over the course of more than 30 years.21 And here we find the source ofthe first acquisitions of Asian artworks for the future collection of the NGP and defacto also for the Náprstek Museum. Due to the global economic crisis that erupted
only a few weeks before the opening of the exhibition,22 in terms of sales the exhibition did not live up to Hloucha’s expectations. Consequently, Hloucha offered hiscollections for auction in Berlin, which took place in December 1930. However,the Berlin auction also was far from unambiguously profitable for Hloucha, and it
was mainly his collection of African sculptures that sold successfully. The situation
was exploited by the then director of the Picture Gallery of the Society of Patriotic
Friends of Art, Vincenc Kramář (1877–1960),23 who was instrumental in founding
the collections of the State Collection of Old Masters and attempted to acquire
works of Asian provenance from private collections in order to establish the ‘Orient’ collection. He had incidentally maintained business contacts with Hloucha
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Figure 1. From Joe Hloucha’s collection at the The Exhibition of Art and the Art Industry from Outside
Europe, Trade Fair Palace, Prague 1929–1930, Rozkvět (obrázkový čtrnáctideník) [Heyday, illustrated
biweekly magazine], No. 51, An. 22 (1929).

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since the early 1920s, when he purchased eight works of old European masters24
for the Picture Gallery of the Society of Patriotic Friends of Art.25
Kramář had good knowledge not only of domestic but also of foreign collections of Asian art through his personal contacts. One of these was none otherthan the prominent banker Baron Eduard von der Heydt (1882–1964), whose
collections became the foundation of the Museum Rietberg Zurich, established in
1952.26 In a letter to Kramář, besides his interest in Kramář’s collection of paintings,27 which he viewed during a visit to Kramář in the Dejvice district of Prague,
Baron Heydt also mentions a catalogue of his collection of East Asian art:28
Ich gestatte mir, Ihnen mit gleicher Post einen Katalog meiner ostasiatischenSammlung zuzusenden. Die Stuecke befinden sich zum Teil als Leihgabe im
Ostasiatischen Museum in Berlin, zum Teil an meiner obigen Addresse [inAscona, Monte Verità, Schweiz, author’s note], wo ich mich im Sommer
aufzuhalten pflege.29
Although Kramář received a personal invitation from Hloucha to attend theexhibition in the Trade Fair Palace,30 due to the impact of the global economiccrisis it was manifestly difficult to obtain sufficient funding from the Ministry of
Education and National Enlightenment (MŠANO)31 for the purchase of works
from Hloucha’s collection.32 Furthermore, after the end of the exhibition, Hloucha intended to sell his collection to the Náprstek Museum, but ultimately noagreement had been reached at the point.33 An extraordinary situation helped
persuade the ministry, which subsidised purchases for national collections, topurchase the first acquisitions of Asian art for state collections, because Hloucha’s
Asian collections for the greater part remained unsold after the Berlin auction.
The Ministry of Culture took advantage of this opportunity in order to purchasefrom Hloucha’s collection at least a fragment of Buddhist art, as well as art from
China, Japan and Southeast Asia, that had originally been designated for the State
Collection of Old Masters,34 and became a part of the collections of the NGP(established 1949).35
Another distinguished collector from the First Czechoslovak Republic fromwhom Kramář acquired art of Asian provenance for the future state gallery (i.e.
later NGP) was Josef Martínek (1888–1976). Similarly to Hloucha, he obtained
artworks in Asia, specifically in China, where he was employed during the second
decade of the 20th century at the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, and where
he gained experience as an expert and collector, which he described colourfully
to readers of the magazine Světozor:
During the process of customs clearing, it was made possible for me to familiarise myself with all the objects of artistic value that were exported from
China, and this provided me with the impetus to start my own collection of
antiques. The outbreak of the revolution in 1911 and the subsequent disorder
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that ensued throughout the whole of China caused objets d’art to be offered
for sale; otherwise they would have remained forever in Chinese collections.36
He also relates fascinating observations of how tourists purchased Chinese
antiques, unwittingly paying for overpriced goods ‘in American dollars, […]although we in China always paid the same prices in Chinese dollars, the exchange
rate of which was 4.70 to the American dollar. Tourists therefore often purchased
worthless items for prices several times higher than us collectors,’37 and, in addition, they also had to pay export duties on their purchases.
Martínek’s exhibition in the Trade Fair Palace, which followed Hloucha’s
extensive presentation, was thematically focused on old Chinese art (fig. 2).38
Despite the persisting economic crisis and the limited state subsidy, Kramář was
successful in securing financial resources from the private sector in order to purchase Chinese paintings and sculptures from Martínek’s collection – a plan heexecuted to some degree:39 ‘it would be useful if our economic contacts with the
Orient, the importance of which for us is ever-increasingly emphasised, were also
more deeply reinforced in the spiritual field.’40
It is necessary to add that additional artworks from the Martínek collection,
which were on sale in the Mánes building, where in 1930 Martínek opened a

Figure 2. From Josef Martínek’s collection at the The Exhibition of Old Chinese Art: The Collection of
J. Martínek, Trade Fair Palace, Prague 1930, Prager Presse, No. 12, An. 10 (1930).

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Figure 3. Bronze ritual vessel gui, Late Western Zhou
dynasty, 9th century BC. Bronze, H. 14 cm, W. 30 cm.
Originally Josef Martínek’s collection, now the National
Gallery in Prague, inv. no. Vp 2662. Photograph © National
Gallery in Prague 2023. (See plate 6, p. 245)

specialised shop selling the Art of China and Japan, and some of which were originally purchased by the National Masaryk Fund established by President Tomáš
Garrigue Masaryk,41 also eventually became housed in the future NGP (fig. 3).

THE ASIAN COLLECTIONS UNDER THE POWER OF NAZI PROPAGANDA
During the period of the Second World War, when the Czech Lands were under
the rule of the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (1939–1945), exhibitions of Japanese art from the state collections of Bohemian and Moravian museums served the purposes of showcasing friendly German-Japanese relations. Let

Figure 4. Photo from the installation of the exhibition of the Art and Art Industry in Japan exhibition at theMuseum of Decorative Arts in Prague in 1943. Umění, An. 15, no. 1-2 (1943).

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Figure 5. Actor Segawa Kikunojo III in the Role of Oshizu, theWife of Tanabe Bunzo by Toshusai Sharaku, 1794. Woodblock
print Nishiki-e, 33.7 × 23.5 cm. Originally from the collectionof Wakai Kenzaburo, T. Straus-Negbaur, E. and F. Portheim,
and Graphische Sammlung, now the National Gallery in
Prague, inv. no. Vm 100. Photograph © National Gallery in
Prague 2023. (See plate 7, p. 246)

us present as an example the exhibition of
the Art and Art Industry in Japan exhibitionat the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague
in 1943 (fig. 4) which was employed as partof the propaganda policy of the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and had to beprepared in accordance with the orders of the office of the Reich Protector in
Bohemia and Moravia.42 The exhibition displayed the collections of Graphische
Sammlung (fig. 5),43 the Náprstek Museum, the Museum of Decorative Arts in
Prague, the Waldes Museum and a few private collectors.44 Joe Hloucha’s original collection of Japanese art, which was eventually purchased in 1942 by the
Náprstek Museum, happened to be displayed at this exhibition. Exhibitions ofJapanese art were thus to present ‘a striking testimony to the high standard ofJapanese creative activity and to the spirit that governs the entire Japanese nation,a faithful friend and ally of the Reich in our common struggle,’ as this official
formulation of the Czech Press Agency was stated in a series of newspapers.45

POST-WAR TRANSPORTS AND THE PROGRAMME OF CENTRALISING MONUMENTS
During the post-war confiscation of the property of the German Reich or private
individuals of German and Hungarian nationality within the territory of Czechoslovakia, transports of artistic objects took place, including works of Asian provenance, under the supervision of the National Cultural Commission.46 After 1948,
when the communist government took power, these were joined also by artefacts
from confiscated and forfeited estates.
In 1951 the Oriental Institute launched negotiations at the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture concerning the establishment of an institution ‘which
would concentrate our monuments of the fine arts of oriental cultures, attend totheir scientific processing and sorting, their study and publication.’47
The proposal to assign the Asian art collections of the NGP to the Náprstek
Museum was rejected on the grounds that the museum should focus on ethnographic tasks. A valid ideological argument, which was supported by both the academic community of orientalists, headed by professors Jaroslav Průšek and Vincenc
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Lesný, and by art historians headed by the director of the NGP Vladimír Novotný,was an assessment of the artistic monuments of Asian cultures from the perspectiveof their equal status alongside European art, which have their rightful place in the
NGP. This mission was eventually realised during the tenure of the first head of the
Department of Oriental Art, Lubor Hájek (1921–2000), in the years 1952–1986.
As Hájek later commented, the proposal for the establishment of an institutionthat would collect, study, and provide access to oriental art had already been tabled in1950 by professor Průšek.48 In addition, Hájek recalled the fact that the first working
editorial office of the journal Nový Orient (New Orient), of which he was a founder
member and also editor-in-chief after the 2nd issue of the first year,49 had been established shortly after the liberation in May 1945.50 He considered it important to establish a science of the arts of ‘oriental’ cultures within the framework of oriental studies
as a separate discipline, and also within the journal Nový Orient, where disputes
ensued concerning the ‘focus of the journal; pressure for the expansion of the political-propaganda function of the magazine; professional disputes […].’51
Among other things, Hájek based his argument upon the programme of state
cultural policy, interlaced with the rhetoric of the time:[Art history, author’s note] is a question of support for the liberation struggles of colonised nations and support for the emancipation of the nationsof the East. However, the strongest argument in favour of the establishmentof such an institution was the founding of the People’s Republic of China,
which has become one of the most important pillars in the peaceful bloc ofpeople’s democracies.52
Another no less important and practical reason for the establishment of a new
Department of Oriental Art at the NGP was the fact that the ministry had legitimised the concept of concentrating artworks of Asian provenance from private
collections of confiscated property estates within the NGP.53 In fact, a series ofconfiscated artworks were also transferred to other museum institutions, including the Náprstek Museum and the Museum of Decorative Arts.
In addition to the organised transports, another auspicious factor was the
successful purchase of works from prestigious private collections dating fromthe period of the First Czechoslovak Republic, connected in particular with thenames of Joe Hloucha, Josef Martínek and Vojtěch Chytil,54 all of whom weremembers of the Oriental Institute.55 Hloucha also became a member of the advisory group for the collecting activity of the newly established Department of Oriental Art, which was headed by Lubor Hájek. A no less fundamental task was thatof establishing an academic discipline for the study of collections of Asian art,
supported not only by orientalists but also by the community of art historians.

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THE ROLE OF THE INDIVIDUAL WITHIN A COMPLICATED NETWORK OFCULTURAL POLITICS
The starting point for an objective evaluation of the intentions of political power
and actual practice is de facto the individual strategy of a historian in response to
the commands of the ruling power.56 Hájek’s primary task in his capacity as thehead of the Department of Oriental Art, designated by ministerial decree, consisted in compiling an inventory of the oriental artistic monuments deposited in
its warehouses.57 These were mostly located in the North Bohemian châteaux ofSychrov, Hrubý Rohozec and Mnichovo Hradiště, and in Moravia in the châteauxof Lednice, Buchlovice, Jaroměřice nad Rokytnou and Vranov. During the years
1952–1953 he therefore compiled an inventory of approximately 6,000 items, ofwhich he earmarked approximately 500 artistic objects for transfer to the collectionin the NGP. In the following years, certain sets of Asian art were also transferredfrom collections of museums and institutions, including the Oriental Institute,
Prague Castle, Charles University, and the North Bohemian Museum in Liberec.58
It was a certain paradox that the planned programme of permanently exhibiting
the amassed artistic monuments of Asian provenance could not be implemented
primarily due to insufficient financial resources. The planned exhibition of Chinese art at the Troja château, which was intended to demonstrate the ideologicalFigure 6. Photo from the installation of Chinese Art, Kinský Palace, June 1954–February 1955. Archive of
the National Gallery in Prague, Documentation of the NGP exhibitions (1945–1958), inv. no. 183. Photograph© National Gallery in Prague 2023.

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propaganda of cultural relations with China, ultimately had to be installed within
the framework of the temporary exhibition of Chinese art at the Kinský Palacein 1954 (fig. 6). On the occasion of the exhibition opening, Hájek formulated theobjectives of the Department of Oriental Art at the NGP within the official rhetoric of the cultural-political propaganda – ‘to provide access to the artistic wealthof the great cultures of Asia, above all the culture of our brother nation China,
and to intensify friendly bonds with the nations of the East’59 – though without
any tangible result in the form of a permanent display of the Asian art collection.
The NGP also collaborated on exhibitions held by other institutions, headedby the Náprstek Museum in Prague. In the autumn of 1955, the museum prepared
the exhibition Unknown Tibet, which aimed to present a unique collection of photographic images and film documenting the construction of the mountain highway to Tibet, obtained by two members of the army film crew, director Vladimír
Sís and cameraman Josef Vaniš,60 who in 1954 were the first travellers from Europe
to go there after the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1950. At the same time, theexhibition aimed to present the ‘first overview of all the available Tibetan material
in our country’,61 with the organisers applying for loans both from the museum
and from private collectors, for example from the art historian Václav Vilém Štech
(1885–1974) (fig. 7). Štech became a source of professional support for Hájek, notonly for new acquisitions as a member of the purchasing commission at the NGP,
but also for the promotion of Asian art in publications (see below). In addition
to the traditional art of Tibet and photographic material from Sís and Vaniš, theexhibition also provided space for the media promotion of official political-economic interests: both the technical accomplishments of the Chinese project forthe construction of the Sichuan-Tibet Highway from Xikang to Lhasa and theCzechoslovak motorcycle Jawa, manufactured by the Motokov company.62
Even Czechoslovak Communist Party voices occasionally noted the apparent
deviation from the original conception of the NGP exhibition of oriental art. On
the occasion of the congress of the Chinese
Communist Party in 1956, for example, attention was drawn to the significance of Chinese
culture, with a call for art historians to focus
greater attention on the study and interpretation of the artistic values of artworks fromthe oriental world, including the provision ofaccess to the collection of oriental artefacts

Figure 7. Tsongkhapa, Tibet, 2nd half of the 19th century.
Colours and gold on canvas, 63.5 × 43 cm. Originally V. V.
Štech’s collection, now the National Gallery in Prague, inv.
no. Vm 6023. Photograph © National Gallery in Prague 2023.
(See plate 8, p. 247)

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located here.63 Of course, this rhetoric at the same time provided a backgroundalso for dramatically presented propaganda of the socialist Eastern bloc, directedagainst the colonialism of the Western superpowers:
It is truly breathtaking when one considers that a country which only a few
years ago liberated itself from the yoke of the colonisers, this enormous state– the largest in the world in terms of its population – is already sending
forth such spiritual powers that shine as a beacon, illuminating the pathway
to the future for all the oppressed nations of Asia and Africa. […] And one
cannot even imagine what wealth of wisdom and culture the other nationsof Asia and Africa shall send forth once they liberate themselves from colonial oppression and embark upon a similar path. […] The history of art
and scientific aesthetics are finding ever deeper connections between thecultures of Europe and Asia. […] And if Marxism-Leninism is the culmination of all European culture, the roots of which reach back to antiquity, thenantiquity shows us its connections with the Orient.64
Hájek, nevertheless, made use of this polemic in order to draw attention once
again to the programme of the Department of Oriental Art. In 1957, in the pagesof Nový Orient magazine, he referenced earlier art historical studies on the significance of the art of Asian cultures (especially the Middle East),65 but concentrated
the main focus on the stagnant state and the passive approach of the ministry inaddressing the situation concerning providing access to the collection in a permanent exhibition.66
Today the situation is such that the Oriental Department of the National
Gallery has two professionals, one office, an insufficient depositary on theoutskirts of Prague, no exhibition halls and several thousand exhibits in its
collection, which though fragmentary, in terms of its quality form a quite
solid foundation.67
Moreover, the department was struggling with understaffing in combination
with a rapid increase in publication and exhibition responsibilities. As Hájek
commented,
If only a few years ago this mostly concerned events inspired by the official
cultural policy, we can now observe how interest in oriental art is spreading
to all strata of society, and that the tasks assigned to the Oriental Departmentof the National Gallery are spontaneously growing out of this new soil.68

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Markéta Hánová

THE PROMOTION OF ASIAN ART
From the second half of the 1950s, Hájek therefore organised not only exhibitionsof Chinese art, which acquiesced to the official propagandistic programme, butalso exhibitions focused on other Asian countries, which were held in the NGPor within the limits of institutional co-operation.69 For example, these included
the exhibition Hokusai and His School in the hall of the Purkyně Association of
Artists in Prague,70 in which he welcomed collaboration with the First Czechoslovak Republic collector Joe Hloucha, who loaned works from his collection to theexhibition.71 Hloucha, who, among other roles, served on the purchasing commission of the Department of Oriental Art, then published a volume on Hokusai
in English via the Artia publisher, which specialised in foreign distribution.72 In
1960, Hájek organised another exhibition on Hokusai, this time within the premises of the Kinský Palace.73 Concurrently, he prepared the exhibition Indian Sculpture (featuring artistic photographs and small sculptures) in 1955, and Classic andContemporary Indian Fine Art at the turn of 1956, by which he de facto opened aplatform for contemporary artists from India (see also the articles by Z. Klimtová
and S. Wille in this publication). Hájek organised the first of the monographic
exhibitions of contemporary artists on Slovanský Island in Prague in July 1955,
presenting the work of the Indian painter Ram Kumar (1924–2018).74
Hájek realised that any lasting art historical interest in Asian art would require
the engagement not only of art historians and collectors, but also artists,75 whom
he endeavoured to engage in publishing and exhibiting activities. He was awarethat the standard of expertise was not everything. His interest lay in applying the
Panofsky iconological method in order to evaluate the significance and originalcontext of an artwork, and to identify the correlations between a work and its
social context. Although he attended lectures in art history and classical archaeology at Charles University with professors Oldřich Blažíček (Proseminar of Art
History), Jaroslav Pešina (Byzantine Art), Antonín Matějček (Art History seminar), Jindřich Čadík (Greek Art) and Bedřich Svoboda (Classical Archaeology
proseminar),76 Hájek approached the formulation of an art historical methodology rather unsystematically, and as a result his analyses frequently create a fragmentary impression as a certain ‘antithesis of a scientific history of art’.77 A certain
role-model for Hájek in a methodological approach was the art historian Václav
Vilém Štech, who during the inter-war period held a position in the cultural
department of the Ministry of Education and National Enlightenment (MŠANO),in charge of the cultural agenda, and later from the 1930s as a professor at the
Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. In his emphasis on the intuitive experience andperception of a work of art, Štech succeeded not only in providing an erudite
analysis of the work, but also in identifying its purpose and aesthetic function. He
also approached Asian art, with which he was less familiar, in this manner.
In the second half of the 1950s, Hájek edited the two-volume publication Umění
čtyř světadílů z českých sbírek mimoevropského umění (The Art of Four Continents
Twentieth-Century Cultural Politics and Networks

73

from Czech Collections of Non-European Art) for the foreign distribution of theArtia publisher,78 which was published in several foreign languages: German,79
French,80 English,81 Italian,82 Spanish83 and Finnish.84 In addition to Štech, whowrote the introductory text, Hájek invited a number of other collaborators to workon the publication, including not only orientalists but also artists such as the photographers Werner and Bedřich Forman, Norberd Frýd, the writers and collectors
Joe Hloucha and Adolf Hoffmeister, the scholar of Indonesia Miroslav Oplt, theethnographer of South American Indian tribes Václav Šolc, and the Egyptologist
professor Zbyněk Žába. Hájek’s ability to present themes and exhibitions of Asianart to a wider audience was not limited to the journal Nový Orient and its later
English version New Orient Bimonthly (1960–1968), targeted at foreign readers.
He found a publication platform also in the academic periodicals Výtvarné umění,Tvorba (journal for criticism and art), and even in the pages of the army magazineČeskoslovenský voják.85 He opened the weekly Kultura in 1959 in a special appendix devoted to the cultural-political theme of the cultures of the East.86 Under the
influence of the critical stance of the socialist bloc towards colonial dominationin Asia and Africa, the term Orient represented the colonial expansion of theWestern capitalist powers, and now appeared outdated.87 The aim was therefore
to arrive at a new conception of this theme in a debate with experts from the cultural sphere, expressing it through the question Does ‘oriental culture’ exist?88 The
debate among orientalists, art historians, and artists ultimately reached a consensus that the term ‘oriental culture’ was a vague and meaningless construct (Lubor
Hájek, the architect Václav Hilský, the art historian and director of the Collectionof Modern Art at the NGP Jan Marius Tomeš). The Indologist Dušan Zbavitel
contemplated the meaning of the word ‘oriental’ from the perspective of its use
which automatically evokes the meaning of ‘foreign’, thus something far removed
from our comprehension and taste: ‘Instead of common traits and features weemphasise peculiarities and differences, […] we should not take the word oriental
in a qualifying sense, as a synonym for remoteness and foreignness.’89
And Adolf Hoffmeister added that the expression ‘oriental culture’ was also
problematic, because it does not express cultural diversity.
It was therefore a certain paradox that the term ‘oriental’ persisted in the official title of the collection department throughout Hájek’s entire tenure as head of
the Collection of Oriental Art.

THE TRAGIC CHAPTER OF THE 1960S
In addition to a relaxation of social relations, the 1960s also finally brought thepossibility of displaying Asian collections in a permanent exhibition. After ten
years of its existence in the NGP, in 1961 the collection department succeeded in
opening the permanent exhibition Masterpieces of Chinese Art at the château in
Benešov nad Ploučnicí.90
74

Markéta HánováA review of the exhibition was written by an equally respected figure fromthe community of Czech art historians, V. V. Štech (fig. 8), who expressed his
aesthetic feelings and impressions of Chinese fine art:
In every piece, the style resonates as an intensive relationship to work, an
inner respect for the world and for life. The paintings are the product oflong observation and a sum of experiences. […] Small, everyday life islinked together with a fantasy of monsters, dragons and celestial guardians
perched on rooftops, […] We feel that this great work has grown out of adifferent concept of time than that which has governed Western art. Statuesof the Buddha exist and operate outside of time. Through their silence, theycomment on our restlessness and haste.91
Hájek conceived the installation in co-operation with Czech artists as a specificGesamtkunstwerk. For the architectural design he invited collaboration from theartist Květa Horáková (1927–1981), who accentuated the economy of the installation with the aid of lightweight glass display cases and separately placed exhibits,
which appeared to be levitating on metal rods (fig. 9). The author of the design ofthe promotional graphic prints was the artist Václav Rykr (1927–1991). Hájek was

Figure 8. Václav Vilém Štech at the storage of the château in Benešov and Ploučnicí on 19 August 1960.
Archive of Masaryk Institute and Archive of Czech Academy of Sciences, fonds: V. V. Štech. Photograph© Archive of Masaryk Institute and Archive of Czech Academy of Sciences.

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75

Figure 9. Photo from the installation of Masterpieces of Chinese Art, the château in Benešov nad Ploučnicí,
1961–1969. Archive of the National Gallery in Prague, Documentation of the NGP exhibitions (1959–1964),
inv. no. 165. Photograph © National Gallery in Prague 2023.

suitably proud of this artistically conceived installation, which he also declared in
New Orient Bimonthly:
The conception underlying the exhibition is not to crowd the area and not toweigh down the installation furniture. Thus they succeeded in utilising theartistic qualities of the space itself, to the same degree as the Chinese exhibits. […] Pursuing the aesthetic aspect rather than the didactic approach(which is traditionally used in museums) brought good result. The visitor
does not mind that the beauty of the European Renaissance construction
speaks to him along with the beauty of the ancient relics of Chinese art;
their combination seems to enhance aesthetic receptivity and create an
unexpected harmony.92
This exhibition was meant to be followed by an additional installation of Asianart in the upper château, which unfortunately was never realised. On 19 December 1969 a fire at the château destroyed more than 2,000 artistic objects,93 marking
a culmination of the national tragedy following the invasion of Czechoslovakia
in 1968. The subsequent period of stagnation was foreshadowed also by theannouncement of the discontinuation of the New Orient Bimonthly:76

Markéta Hánová

Due to the generally known tragic events in our country, beginning with
August 21st 1968, the regular publication of our international journal has
become impossible. In this situation, the editorial board has decided to discontinue the production of New Orient Bimonthly immediately. We hopethat our friends all over the world will understand.94
Hájek’s interdisciplinary interest in the art of Asian cultures was founded upona need to understand artistic expressions within a horizontal perspective, i.e. toconceive of the history of art from a global as well as contemporary perspective.
His relationship towards the contemporary art world both in this country andabroad, which he developed both through publications and exhibitions, remained
his motto throughout his subsequent years at the NGP.

NOTES
*

1.

2.

3.
4.
5.
6.

7.
8.
9.

10.
11.

This article was supported by a NGP’s Grant for the Long-Term Conceptual Development of a Research
Organisation of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. It develops the paper delivered at theconference Collecting Asian Art in Prague: Cultural Politics and Transcontinental Networks in 20th-Century Central Europe held in the National Gallery in Prague on June 17–18, 2021.
On the relationship of the academic history of art and institutional practice in post-war Czechoslovakia
see, e.g., Lucie Storchová et al., Koncepty a dějiny: proměny pojmů v současné historické vědě (Prague:
Scriptorium, 2014), Milena Bartlová, Dějiny českých dějin umění 1945-1969: dějiny umění slouží vědě očlověku (Prague: UMPRUM, 2020).
Today’s Collection of Asian Art. Archive of the National Gallery in Prague, fonds: National Gallery(1945–1958), Collection of the Oriental Department, Ministry of Education, Science and Art Decree of
16 November 1951 on the Establishment of the Oriental Department at the National Gallery in Prague,
ref. no. 142.477/51-V/2.
The museum was originally established as the Czech Industrial Museum in Prague in 1874. Today
it bears the title of the Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures of the National
Museum in Prague.
Museum für angewandte Kunst (Museum of Applied Arts).
Today, the museum is a part of the Moravian Gallery in Brno.
As early as 1880, the museum obtained Chinese porcelains as a donation from Vojtěch Lanna, and in
1885, it made substantial acquisitions of Chinese and Japanese art of all types. See Emanuel Poche,‘Sbírky umělecké výroby orientální’, in Uměleckoprůmyslové museum v Praze, k 70. výročí založení
ústavu, (Prague: Čedok Publishing House, 1955), 255–282.
The period of the ‘First Czechoslovak Republic’ refers to the inter-war period of the independent
Czecho­slovak state (1918–1938) before its occupation by Nazi Germany. The president during thisperiod was Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937).
For more on this topic, see Adéla Jůnová Macková and Libor Jůn, eds., Czechoslovakia in the Orient:
The Orient in Czechoslovakia 1918–1938 (Prague: Masaryk Institute and Archive, Czech Academy of
Sciences, 2022).
For more on the subject of non-colonial colonialism in relation to the Czech Lands, see Sarah Lemmen, ‘Noncolonial Orientalism? Czech Travel Writing on Africa and Asia around 1918,’ in Deploying
Orientalism in Culture and History: from Germany to Central and Eastern Europe, eds. James R. Hodkinson, John Walker, Shaswati Mazumdar, Johannes Feichtinger (Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 2013),
209–227; Markéta Křížová and Jitka Malečková, eds., Central Europe and the Non-European World in theLong 19th Century (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2022) 25, 69.
Masarykův slovník naučný – lidová encyklopedie všeobecných vědomostí (Prague: Československý Kompas, 1931), 394.
In 1933, the Japanese Section was formed as part of the Oriental Institute (Toyo kyokai nichi bunka
kyokai 東洋協会日致文化協会), Archive of Masaryk Institute and Archive of Czech Academy of
Sciences, fonds: the Czechoslovak-Japanese Society, Japanese Section, Reports on Activities 1935–1938.

Twentieth-Century Cultural Politics and Networks

77

12.

31.

The Oriental Institute was founded in 1922 by the Law on the Oriental and Slavic Institute, Collectionof Laws and Regulations, no. 27/1922 of 25 January 1922.
Alois Musil, ‘Naše úkoly v orientalistice a v Orientě’, Naše doba [Our Time] XXVII, (1920): 176–182,
270–281.
At the end of the First World War, Japan became an important destination for Czechoslovak legions
returning from battles in eastern Russia via the Trans-Siberian route, where they could board ship toreturn to their homeland. For more on the subject, see, e.g., Susumu Nagayo, ‘Pobyt Milana RastislavaŠtefánika v Japonsku (Spring 1918)’, Historický časopis [Historical Journal], Historický ústav SAV, No. 2,(1993): 161–170. The legionnaires’ representation in Tokyo was established in November 1918, headedby the charge d’affairs Václav Němec. Official diplomatic relations commenced with the establishmentof the Czechoslovak embassy in Tokyo on 12 January 1920, with its first ambassador Karel Pergler (inthe years 1920–1921).
Gerolf Coudenhove-Kalergi (1896–1978) was the son of an Austrian diplomat and a Japanese mother,
Mitsuko. Thanks to his language skills and legal education, he was employed as a secretary at the Japanese embassy in Prague, and during the war also as a lecturer in Japanese language at the German
University and the Oriental Institute, where he founded the Japanese Section (1933).
The exhibition with 1,220 Asian and African items from Hloucha’s collection was held from 22 November 1929 till 16 February 1930. Výstava mimoevropského umění a uměleckého průmyslu [The Exhibitionof Art and the Art Industry from Outside Europe] (1929), (exh. cat).
Joe Hloucha (1881–1952) found fame especially as an author of literary Japonaiserie, of which his debut
Sakura ve vichřici [Sakura in the Tempest], written in 1905, brought him unprecedented acclaim and theresources for his first journey to Japan.
‘Československý export si musí najíti cestu na Východ. Zahájení Hlouchovy výstavy mimoevropskéhoumění’ [Czechoslovak Exports Must Find a Path to the East. Opening of Hloucha’s Exhibition of Art
and the Art Industry from Outside Europe], České slovo, 24 November 1929. All the quotations in the
text were translated from the Czech original.
Most of the artefacts from Africa were sold to foreign private and museum collections. Regarding theauction in Berlin, see the auction catalogue Sammlung Joe Hloucha, Prag: Ostasien, Ozeanien, Afrika,japanische Graphik / Eingeleitet von L. Adam [The Joe Hloucha Collection, Prague: East Asia, Oceania,
Africa, Japanese Prints, with an introduction by L. Adam] (Berlin: Internationales Kunst- und Auktionshaus, 1930). For a review of the exhibition see e.g. Pestrý týden, 23 November 1929, 3; 30 November 1929, 5, and 7 December 1929, 7.
As many as 105 Japanese firms from the art export industry were presented. See, e.g., Prager Presse,
24 March 1930, 2.
‘It is now more than 30 years [1898, author’s note] since I commenced my collecting activity, for the purpose of which I have embarked upon several grand and expensive study journeys to the most remote partsof the world, in which I of course focused mainly on the Japanese islands, which I visited several times fora longer period of time.’ Letter from Joe Hloucha addressed to the Ministry of Education and National
Enlightenment, October 1934, ar. Hloucha 2/5-1, Archive of Náprstek Museum.
The exhibition was opened on 22 November 1929.
Vincenc Kramář was a distinguished Czech historian and art theoretician, as well as an expert andcollector, predominantly of cubist art.
Archive of the National Gallery in Prague, fonds: Vincenc Kramář, confirmation from Joe Hloucha of
the receipt of a cheque for 350,000 Czechoslovak crowns for eight works of art dated 27 April 1923.
Gesellschaft Patriotischer Kunstfreunde in Böhmen.
For further details on the provenance of the collections in the Museum Rietberg Zurich, see mostrecently Esther Tisa Francini and Sarah Csernay, eds., Pathways of Art. How Objects Get to the Museum(Zurich: Museum Rietberg and Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess AG, 2022).
Kramář’s collection gained renown especially for its French art and Czech cubism. See, e.g., Alena
Pomajzlová, ‘Sbírka českého umění 19. a 20. století Vincence Kramáře’ in Od starých mistrů k Picassovi(Prague: National Gallery in Prague, 2000).
This probably concerned a publication by Karl With, Bildwerke Ost- und Südasiens aus der Sammlung
Yi Yuan (Basel: Schwabe, 1924).
‘Let me send you a catalogue of my collection of East Asian art as part of the same shipment. Some of thepieces are on loan in the East Asian Museum in Berlin, some are in my address above [in Ascona, Monte
Verità, Switzerland], where I like to stay in the summer.’ Archive of the National Gallery in Prague,
fonds: Vincenc Kramář, Letter from Baron von der Heydt addressed to V. Kramář, dated 8 October 1928.
Archive of the National Gallery in Prague, fonds: Vincenc Kramář, Letter from Hloucha dated 25 January 1930.
Ministerstvo školství a národní osvěty. The ministry was in charge of education and culture.

78

Markéta Hánová

13.
14.

15.

16.
17.
18.

19.

20.
21.

22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.

30.

32.

33.

34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.

54.
55.

56.

Archive of the National Gallery in Prague, fonds: Vincenc Kramář, report from Dr V. Kramáře, Deset
let obrazárny, manuscript, 23. 6. 1928; report to the Ministry of Education and National Enlightenment, ref. no. 621-28, 28.11.1928; letter to the minister concerning the insufficient state subsidy dated
14 February 1930.
The purchase of the collection was eventually implemented as late as in 1942 for an estimated pricefrom 1931 of the amount of 1,512,000 Czechoslovak crowns, letter from Náprstek Museum of General
Ethnography in Prague addressed to Joe Hloucha, Archive of the Náprstek Museum, fonds: ar. Hloucha
2/5-4.
Archive of the National Gallery in Prague, fonds: Society of Patriotic Friends of Art, letter from Vincenc
Kramář addressed to MŠANO: Czechoslovak State Picture Gallery – Old Chinese Art from the Hloucha
collection, dated 8 May 1931.
Markéta Hánová, ‘Origins of the Collection of Asian Art at the National Gallery in Prague’, Bulletin of
the National Gallery in Prague XXXI / 2021 (Prague: The National Gallery in Prague, 2021), 110-143.
Josef Martínek, ‘Sběratelské zkušenosti’, Světozor – světová kronika současná slovem a obrazem. Časopis
pro zábavu i poučení, XXXII, no. 13, 31 December 1931, 211.
Josef Martínek, ‘Sběratelské zkušenosti’, Světozor – světová kronika současná slovem a obrazem. Časopis
pro zábavu i poučení, XXXII, no. 13, 31 December 1931, 211.
The exhibition was held from 16 March to 1 May 1930. Výstava starého čínského umění: kolekce J.
Martínka (The Exhibition of Old Chinese Art: The Collection of J. Martínek), exhibition catalogue, Trade
Fair Palace in Prague VII, Prague 1930.
Thanks to a sponsor’s donation from the banking house Petschek & spol., the Gutmann brothers andJindřich Waldes, he purchased eight Chinese paintings and two sculptures. Archive of the National
Gallery in Prague, fonds: the Society of Patriotic Friends of Art, letter no. 278 dated 13 May 1930.
Archive of the National Gallery in Prague, fonds: the Society of Patriotic Friends of Art, letter fromVincenc Kramář to the directorate of Živnostenská banka dated 21 July 1930, no. 531.
This concerned 22 Chinese paintings which were brought to the NGP from the collections of Prague
Castle in 1953.
The exhibition was held from 25 February till 10 April 1943.
Hánová 2019, 107–111.
‘Výstava Umění a umělecký průmysl v Japonskuʾ, Umění [Art] An. 15, no. 1-2 (1943): 73–74.
See ‘Výstava japonského umění a průmyslu. Obraz duševních sil velkého národa’, Lidové noviny, 27 February 1943. The quotation was translated from the Czech original.
For further details, see Kristina Kaplanová, Archivní fond: Národní kulturní komise (1917–1954) –inventář (Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, electronic document, Prague 2001).
Archive of the National Gallery in Prague, fonds: National Gallery (1945–1958), Collection of Oriental
Department, Lubor Hájek, concept No. 930/54 addressed to the Ministry of Culture.
Lubor Hájek, ‘K organisaci a studiu orientálního umění’, Nový Orient [The New Orient] XII, no. 2(1957): 17.
Hájek was employed by Oriental Institute as editor of Nový Orient from 1 July 1945. Archive of theMasaryk Institute and Archive of Czech Academy of Sciences, fonds: Oriental Institute.
The first issue was published on 15 October 1945. ‘Kdo a kdy navrhl založení Nového Orientu?’, NovýOrient [The New Orient] L, no. 5 (1995): 199.
‘Nový Orient před 25 lety (Beseda se zakládajícími členy redakce NO: dr. Luborem Hájkem, CSs., dr.
Zdeňkem Hrdličkou a dr. Miloslavem Krásou),’ Nový Orient [The New Orient], no. 5 (1970): 130.
Hájek, Concept, report for the Ministry of Culture, ref. no. 930/54, 1954, Archive of NGP, fonds: Collection of Asian art. Hájek published the content of the concept in the article ‘K organisaci a studiu
orientálního umění’, Nový Orient [The New Orient] XII, no. 2 (1957): 17-18.
Markéta Hánová, ‘The Collection of Asian Art in the National Gallery in Prague: The Concept of Generosity in the Development of the Japanese Art Collection and in the Iconography of Japanese Buddhism’in Generosity: The Art of Giving: White Rabbit – the Companion, eds. Adam Budak, Michaela Pejčochová(Prague: National Gallery in Prague, 2016), 66–71.
For more on Chytil’s role in collecting Chinese art, see Michaela Pejčochováʾs contribution to this volume.
Hloucha was appointed an executive member of the cultural department in 1934, Martínek became an
executive member of the economic department in 1932, and Chytil was appointed an executive memberof the cultural department in 1929. Věstník Orientálního ústavu v Praze za desetiletí 1828–1938, Prague
1938, Archive of Masaryk Institute and Archive of Czech Academy of Sciences, fonds: Oriental Institute.
For further details on the academic regime in post-war Czechoslovakia, see Jakub Jareš et al., Mezi
konkurencí a spoluprací: Univerzita Karlova a Československá akademie věd 1945-1969 (Prague: Charles
University, Karolinum Press, 2018).

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79

57.

85.

Archive of the National Gallery in Prague, fonds: National Gallery (1945–1958), Collection of Oriental
Department, decree of MŠVU ref. no. 67570/52–VIII/7 dated 21 July 1952.
Hánová 2016, see note 53.
Lubor Hájek, ‘K instalaci čínské výstavy’ [‘On the Installation of a Chinese Exhibition’], Výtvarná práce[Visual Artwork] II, no. 1 (2 July 1954): 10.
Vladimír Sís (1925–2001) and Josef Vaniš (1927–2009).
See letter addressed to Dr V. V. Štech by the Náprstek Museum dated 15 October 1955, ref. no. 676/1955,
Archive of Masaryk Institute and Archive of Czech Academy of Sciences, fonds: V. V. Štech. Today only
two Buddhist paintings from Tibet and Mongolia – thangkas – have been preserved from his collectionin the NGP (inventory nos. Vm 6022, Vm 6023), which was purchased by the NGP in 1987 from Štech’s
niece Jana Farková.
Cesta do Tibetu. Přímým přenosem z Náprstkova musea, reportage by Czechoslovak Television, directedby Svatopluk Studený, October 2, 1956, see Československý rozhlas a televise, no. 40, 1 October 1956.
Václav Pekárek, ‘Čínská kultura’, Literární noviny, Týdeník pro kulturně politické a umělecké otázky,no. 41 (1956), 1–2.
Václav Pekárek, ‘Čínská kultura,’ Literární noviny, Týdeník pro kulturně politické a umělecké otázky,no. 41 (1956): 1. The quotation was translated from the Czech original.
Miroslav Tyrš, O významu studia dějin starého umění orientálního (1883) and Otakar Hostinský, O
pokroku v umění (1894).
Lubor Hájek, ‘K organisaci a studiu orientálního umění,’ Nový Orient [The New Orient] XII, no. 2(1957): 17-18.
Lubor Hájek, ‘K organisaci a studiu orientálního umění’, Nový Orient [The New Orient] XII, no. 2(1957): 17. The quotation was translated from the Czech original.
Lubor Hájek, ‘K organisaci a studiu orientálního umění’, Nový Orient [The New Orient] XII, no. 2(1957): 17. The quotation was translated from the Czech original.
Helena Obrová, ed., Inventory of exhibitions 1945–1985 (Prague: National Gallery in Prague, 1989).
Hokusai a jeho žáci, exhibition catalogue (Prague: Purkyně Association of Artists, 1954). The exhibition
was held from 22 September to 14 November 1954 in the exhibition hall Salon výtvarné dílo – S. V.
Purkyně in Prague.
In 1949, Hloucha published the first Czech written monograph on Hokusai, which he accompaniedwith reproductions of works from his collection.
Joe Hloucha, Hokusai: The Man Mad-on-Drawing (Prague: Artia, 1955).
Markéta Hánová, Japanese Woodblock Prints and Collectors in the Czech Lands (Prague: National Gallery in Prague, 2019), 209.
‘Indický malíř Rám Kumár’, Svobodné slovo, 28 July 1955.
Jiří Roubík and Emil Filla, ‘Mluvili jsme s Emilem Fillou o orientálním umění’, Nový Orient [The New
Orient] no. 2 (1945–1946): 7–8.
Letter from Hájek addressed to Director Lesný asking him for permission to attend lectures as an Oriental Institute employee, dated 22 March 1950, Archive of Masaryk Institute and Archive of Czech
Academy of Sciences, fonds: Oriental Institute.
Hájek graduated from the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague, specialising in Indology andComparative Religious Studies. Ladislav Kesner, ed., Lubor Hájek: Západ slunce na moři (Prague: H&H
Vyšehradská, s. r. o. and National Gallery in Prague, 2009), 22-26.
Stanislava Mouchová, Bücherverzeichnis 1953-1966, Artia Verlag Prag (Prague: Artia, 1968), 56-59, 68,
91-93.
Kunst ferner Länder. Ägypten – Afrika – Amerika – Ozeanien – Indonesien (Prag: Artia Verlag 1956,
1958), Kunst ferner Länder. Vorderasien – Indien – Tibet – China – Japan – Tschuktschen (Halbinsel,
1957, 1959).
L’Art des pays lointains. Egypte – Afrique – Amérique – Océanie – Indonésie, 1956, 1959. L’Art des pays
lointains. Asie antérieure – Inde – Indochine – Tibet – China – Japan – Tchouktches, 1957, 1959.
Exotic Art. Egypt – Africa – America – Oceania – Indonesia, Spring Books, London 1956, 1958. Art of Far
Lands (London: Spring Books, 1957).
L’Arte dei paesi lontani, Egitto – Africa – America – Oceania – Indonesia, 1958. L’Arte dei paesi lontani.
Asia anteriore – India – Indocina – Tibet – Cina – Giappone – Ciukci, 1959.
El arte de los anitiquos y de los primitivos. Egipto – Africa – América – Oceanía – Indonesia (Mexico:
Editorial Hermes) 1963. El arte de los anitiquos y de los primitivos. Asia anterior – India – Indochina –Tibet – China – Japón – los Tchuktches (Mexico: Editorial Hermes), 1963.
Kaukomaiden taidetta. Egypti – Afrikka – Amerikka – Oseaania – Indonesia, Werner Söderström (Helsinki, 1960). Kaukomaiden taidetta. Etu-Aasia – Intia – Tiibetti – Kiina – Japani – Tšuktšien niemimaa(Helsinki: Werner Söderström), 1959.
L. Hájek, ‘Stařec posedlý malováním’, Československý voják, IX, no. 21, 1960: 25.

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Markéta Hánová

58.
59.
60.
61.

62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.

86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.

Kultura. Týdeník pro otázky kultury a umění, III, no. 42, 22 October 1959.
Jaroslav Průšek, ‘Orient, orientalistika a poznání východních zemí’, Kultura. Týdeník pro otázky kulturya umění, no. 42 (1959): 3.
‘Existuje orientální kultura?’ Kultura, no. 42 (1959): 4-5.
‘Existuje orientální kultura?’ Kultura, no. 42 (1959): 5. The quotation was translated from the Czech
original.
Hánová 2021, see note 35.
V. V. Štech, ‘Výtvarné skvosty do pohraničí’, Literární noviny, Týdeník pro kulturně politické a uměleckéotázky, no. 22 (1961): 6. The quotation was translated from the Czech original.
Lubor Hájek, ‘Chinese Art in a Renaissance Castle’, New Orient Bimonthly. Journal for the Modern andAncient Cultures of Asia and Africa, Vol. 2, no. 5 (October 1961): 152. See also ‘Czech Castle – ChineseArt’, Oriental Art, Vol. IX, no. 4 (Winter 1963): 216.
Hánová 2021, see note 35.
Dušan Zbavitel, ed., New Orient Bimonthly, Vol. 7, no. 5 (October 1968): 160.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bartlová, Milena. Dějiny českých dějin umění 1945-1969: dějiny umění slouží vědě o člověku. Praha: UMPRUM,
2020.
Francini, Esther Tisa and Sarah Csernay, eds. Pathways of Art. How Objects Get to the Museum. Zurich: Museum
Rietberg and Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess AG, 2022.
Hánová, Markéta. ‘The Collection of Asian Art in the National Gallery in Prague: The Concept of Generosity
in the Development of the Japanese Art Collection and in the Iconography of Japanese Buddhism’. In
Generosity – The Art of Giving: White Rabbit, the Companion, edited by Adam Budak and Michaela
Pejčochová, 66–71. Prague: National Gallery, 2016.
Hánová, Markéta. Japanese Woodblock Prints and Collectors in the Czech Lands. Prague: National Gallery, 2019.
Hánová, Markéta, and Zdenka Klimtová, eds. The Buddha Up Close. Prague: National Gallery, 2021.
Hánová, Markéta. ‘Origins of the Collection of Asian Art at the National Gallery in Prague’. Bulletin Národnígalerie v Praze [Bulletin of the National Gallery in Prague], no. 31 (2021): 110–143.
Hloucha, Joe. Hokusai: The Man Mad-on-Drawing. Prague: Artia, 1955.
Hostinský, Otakar. ‘O pokroku v umění’. In: Čtyři rozpravy, 59–77. Praha: F. Šimáček, 1894.
Jareš, Jakub et al. Mezi konkurencí a spoluprací: Univerzita Karlova a Československá akademie věd 1945-1969.
Praha: Univerzita Karlova, nakladatelství Karolinum, 2018.
Jůnová Macková, Adéla, and Libor Jůn, eds. Czechoslovakia in the Orient: The Orient in Czechoslovakia 1918–
1938. Praha: Masaryk Institute and Archive, Czech Academy of Sciences, 2022.
Kaplanová, Kristina. Archivní fond: Národní kulturní komise (1917–1954) – inventář. Praha: Institute of Art
History, Czech Academy of Sciences, electronic document, 2001.
Kesner, Ladislav, ed. Lubor Hájek: Západ slunce na moři. Praha: H&H Vyšehradská, s. r. o. a Národní galerie v
Praze, 2009.
Lemmen, Sarah. ‘Noncolonial Orientalism? Czech Travel Writing on Africa and Asia around 1918’. In: Deploying Orientalism in culture and history: from Germany to Central and Eastern Europe, edited by James R.
Hodkinson and John Walker and Shaswati Mazumdar and Johannes Feichtinger, 209–227. Rochester,N.Y.: Camden House, 2013.
Křížová, Markéta and Jitka Malečková, eds. Central Europe and the Non-European World in the Long 19th Century. Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2022.
Masarykův slovník naučný – lidová encyklopedie všeobecných vědomostí, Praha: Československý kompas, 1931.
Mouchová, Stanislava. Bücherverzeichnis 1953-1966, Artia Verlag Prag. Prag: Artia, 1968.
Obrová, Helena. ed. Inventory of exhibitions 1945–1985. Prague: National Gallery in Prague, 1989.
Poche, Emanuel. ‘Sbírky umělecké výroby orientální’. In: Uměleckoprůmyslové museum v Praze, k 70. výročí
založení ústavu, 255–282. Praha: Uměleckoprůmyslové museum, 1955.
Sammlung Joe Hloucha, Prag: Ostasien, Ozeanien, Afrika, japanische Graphik / Eingeleitet von L. Adam [TheJoe Hloucha Collection, Prague: East Asia, Oceania, Africa, Japanese Prints, with an introduction by L.
Adam]. Berlin: Internationales Kunst- und Auktionshaus, Berlin 1930.
Storchová, Lucie a kol. Koncepty a dějiny: proměny pojmů v současné historické vědě. Praha: Scriptorium, 2014.
Tyrš, Miroslav. ‘O významu studia dějin starého umění orientálního’ (1883). In: O umění, 101–118. Praha:Československá obec sokolská, 1932.
Věstník Orientálního ústavu v Praze za desetiletí 1828–1938 [Bulletin of the Oriental Institute in Prague for the
Decade 1928–1938]. Praha 1938.

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Vincenc Kramář: od starých mistrů k Picassovi. Exhibition catalogue, edited by Vojtěch Lahoda and Olga
Uhrová. Praha: Národní galerie, 2000.
Výstava mimoevropského umění a uměleckého průmyslu, a text by Joe Hloucha, Veletržní palác, Praha 1929.
With, Karl. Bildwerke Ost- und Südasiens aus der Sammlung Yi Yuan [d. i. Eduard von der Heydt]. Mit begleitendem Text von K. With. Einband u. Vorsatzpapier nach Entwurf von Georg Baus. Basel: Schwabe,
1924.

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‘I HAVE SHOWN YOU JAPAN …’1
FELIKS JASIEŃSKI AND JAPANESE ART
COLLECTIONS IN POLAND
Agnieszka Kluczewska-Wójcik

The first monographic exhibition of Japanese art in Poland was opened in Warsaw on 14 February 1901. Its initiator and curator, Feliks Jasieński (1861–1929)2(fig. 1), who supplied works to be shown from his collection, wrote about preparing the Warsaw public for the event, at the same time explaining his intentions:
Reflection on Japanese art and history should be of tremendous pedagogicalimportance to us, who until now have been unable to create anything thatis truly ours. We have Polish artists, but no Polish art. A nation can only
produce its own art when it has its own national style […] What we have torealise is that the Japanese exist because they are Japanese. So let us learn
from the Japanese how to be Poles.3
The outstanding collector and future donor of the National Museum in Kraków
summarised in this way the assumptions and objectives of the new artistic current,
which, to a large extent thanks to him, was reaching Poland. Japonisme arrived
there more than thirty years after the
first major presentations of Japanese
art in London, Paris, and Vienna.
Deprived of a state Poles did notparticipate in the 1880s diplomatic
missions and the signing of treaties

Figure 1. Portrait of Feliks Jasieński by Leon
Wyczółkowski. 1911. Pastel on paper. National
Museum in Kraków (from Jasieński’s collection).
(See plate 9, p. 248)

‘I Have Shown You Japan …’83‘opening’ Japan to the West. Among the members of official delegations as wellas Austrian and Russian scientific expeditions, however, there were also scholars
from Poland such as biologist and zoologist Szymon Syrski, ethnographer Jan
Kubary, botanist Hugo Zapałowicz, and geographer Eugeniusz Romer.4 There wasalso another special ‘Polish path’, running through Siberia, towards the northernend of the Japanese archipelago, through which the Russians sent deportees, suchas participants of Polish national movements. This was the route taken by exiles,
the most famous being Bronisław Piłsudski, the future explorer of the Ainu, andWacław Sieroszewski, writer and author of popular books about Japan, whobrought back a small collection of artworks from his year-and-a-half-long expedition. Art historian and collector Count Karol Lanckoroński and princes Witold
Kazimierz and Adam Ludwik Czartoryski went to Japan as part of round-theworld expeditions fashionable at the time. In January 1892 in Lwów (now Lviv,
Ukraine), Count Paweł Sapieha showed his collection from a trip he had madeaccompanied by Rüdiger Biegeleben, the Austrian envoy to China and Japan.
Industrialist and political and philanthropic activist Stanisław Glezmer, working in Petersburg, travelled to East Asia to study the circumstances of the successof modernisation in the Meiji Empire.5 Upon his return, he rebuilt his palace in
Strugi (near Warsaw), erecting a special Japanese pavilion, the only example of
Japonising architecture in Poland (fig. 2). In it he placed his collection, mostly
works of craft, acquired during the voyage. After his death it was gifted to the
National Museum in Warsaw (where the majority of the collection was lost during the Second World War).6
It was from these individuals’ travel memoirs and the increasing numberof press reports from abroad that more detailed knowledge was drawn about
the exotic ‘Land of Mikado’, whose suggestive image, though far from real, was
imposed by Arthur Sullivan’s and William Gilbert’s operetta (1885), popular in
Poland. For the average Pole, however, Japan still remained too distant to arouse
more than passing interest. Deeper understanding and knowledge was still tocome, though the long process of discovery was begun by the Russo-Japanese
War. Japan was also more of an economic or political model than an artistic one.7
The Polish public first becameacquainted with Japanese art a little
earlier, thanks to exhibitions organised by Jasieński starting in 1901. His
first ‘performance’ at the Society for

Figure 2. Stanislaw Glezmer’s Japanese pavilion,
Strugi (near Warsaw), after 1908. Colour
photograph. Photo Agnieszka Kluczewska-Wójcik
(See plate 10, p. 248)

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Agnieszka Kluczewska-Wójcik

the Encouragement of Fine Arts (Zachęta) was a typical case of succès de scandale: a provocation designed to draw attention to a new artistic phenomenon,
which would otherwise have no chance of being noticed by the ordinary viewerof culture. An earlier exhibition of Sapieha’s collection, as well as a commercial
presentation of Ukiyo-e prints, from Siegfried Bing’s collection, organised in 1900
in Aleksander Krywult’s salon in Warsaw, passed pretty much unnoticed. Eventhe second exhibition, which was to mark the occasion of Ignacy Matuszewski’s
publication of the first monographic article devoted to Japanese painting,8 did not
attract any attention from the general public, despite clear interest from critics.
Feliks Jasieński, the culprit of this artistic scandal, having returned to Warsaw
after several years in Paris, was already the author of a book entitled Manggha.
Promenades à travers le monde, l’art et les idées (in honour of Hokusai)9 and themusic critic of the newly established literary and arts magazine Chimera, the cradle of Polish symbolism. He presented Japanese works of art that he had gatheredin France to astonished Varsovians. Together with the rest of his collection, theseartworks were to be transferred, as stated by Jasieński, ‘to the museum whichmust be created here […] Without such a permanent museum of art, there canbe no question of developing artistic taste among the general public and, consequently, of creating a national art’.10
He confirmed his intentions in a declaration inscribed in his copy of theauction catalogue of the Goncourt brothers’ collection of Far Eastern art (1897),
placed significantly on the back of the title page, symmetrically to the facsimileof the famous testament of Edmond de Goncourt on the next page. Unlike Goncourt, who decided to disperse his collection and use the money he obtained tofound a literary award, Jasieński gave his collection to the Polish nation:
It is my wish that this modest nucleus of a collection of Japanese arts – themost original, audacious, and refined art ever – should become the propertyof my country and be transformed into a free-of-charge museum so that art
lovers yet to be born may come to experience the most exquisite sensations
that art can provide and keep a grateful memory of the first Polish Japoniste.11
The Japanese exhibition was organised on Jasieński’s initiative, and at his own
expense, at the most prestigious venue possible: the newly inaugurated buildingof the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts, the only Polish artistic institution in the territories of the Russian Partition. It lasted two months and was thefirst exhibition of its kind in Poland, covering all areas of Japanese art. The exhibition was his first attempt – and the model for all Jasieński’s future ‘artistic actions’,
where the presentation of objects from his collection was always accompanied bylectures and press publications. Jasieński was personally responsible for all the
preparations, from the general concept to the smallest technical details. Before
the inauguration, he published a series of articles devoted to Japanese art and its
influence on the development of the Polish artistic school.12‘I Have Shown You Japan …’85As reported in the newspapers, the exhibition showedabout a thousand items, representing, in various sizes and outlines, Japanese art, from the beginning of the twelfth to the middle of the last century.
[…] The glass showcases contain around five hundred sabre guards […],a collection of dagger handles […] A serious sizeable part is occupied bybronzes […], vases […], incense boxes, candlesticks, plants, animals, etc.
This section includes enamelled wares […] The collection of lacquerware
includes small boxes [inrō] worn by Japanese women, combs, and hair pins[…]. In this section we include related sculptures made of wood, such as
Buddha statues and models of theatre masks made of ivory. […] The centreof the exhibition hall is occupied by a large collection of colour woodcuts,
including the so-called surimono, printed only in one or a few copies.13
Critics underlined the high value of the presented artworks, which were displayedin chronological order ‘so that they may give a full picture of the developmentof the art of this people from the Far Eastern reaches and teach our society tonavigate its artistic output’.14 Though, as was noted, the lack of space prevented thefull realisation of ‘didactical aims’ and the presentation of the whole collection, its
owner ‘faithful to his role of propagator of Japanese curio, not only spares no hints
and gladly shares his knowledge […] but also he did not hide his treasures but isready to place them in the hands of anyone, who has interest in the matters of art’.15
The exhibition drew large crowds – it was visited by nearly eight thousandpeople. The audience was both intrigued and shocked by the new artistic proposal
and, above all, by the atmosphere of scandal and provocation accompanying theevent. Jasieński, prone to violent reactions, responded to the criticism of and disrespect for Japan’s artistic achievements with an open attack on his opponents,
reminding the audience that they not only deliberately distorted the names of
Ukiyo-e masters to make them sound as if they were in operettas such as Mikado
or Geisha but also compared ‘Japanese art to packages of Chinese tea’.16 On the
cover of the album in which he later kept surimono, he placed an inscription: ‘Not
for cattle’ in order to protect them from viewers who are incapable of appreciating
their full artistic value.
In his polemical passion Jasieński went as far as proving Kuniyoshi’s superiority over Jan Matejko, the most outstanding Polish historical painter.17 Even worse,at the same moment, he published an critical obituary about the realist painter
Wojciech Gerson, an opponent of new artistic currents, especially Impressionism,
whose representatives the collector actively supported.18 By attacking Gerson, thedirector of the Klasa Rysunkowa (‘Drawing Class’, the only art school in Warsaw)
and chair of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts, Jasieński was in fact
challenging the entire official – conservative – artistic milieu of Warsaw. In the
media storm which followed these publications, the collector’s strongest supporters were the members of the circle of modernists gathered around Chimera. Its
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Agnieszka Kluczewska-Wójcik

editor, Zenon Przesmycki, prepared a long article presenting Ukiyo-e in the context of the history of Japanese art, referring to Western sources and supporting
his arguments with examples from Jasieński’s collection – Japanese woodblock
prints from the collection, in lithographs by Polish artists, served as illustrations
in subsequent issues of Chimera. It was the first serious study familiarising Polishreaders with the outlines of this newly discovered artistic tradition. Not by accident, its publication coincided with the intensification of criticism surrounding
the exhibition.19
Put off by the negative reception of his activities, Jasieński withdrew his promise to hand over the collection to the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts
and decided to move it from Warsaw to Kraków. His apartment, on the second
floor of a townhouse on the corner of Market Square, became an important pointon the map of the artistic and spiritual capital of Poland, as Kraków was the seatof such important scientific and cultural institutions as the Jagiellonian University, the Academy of Fine Arts and the National Museum. While preparing forthe move he presented his collection in the two most important cities of Galicia:
Kraków at the turn of October and November 1901 and again in January 1902 as
well as in Lwów in November and December 1901. This series of exhibitions wasdevoted to the graphic arts. In addition to Japanese woodblock prints, including
Utamaro, Eishi, Shunsho, Eisan, Toyokuni, Hokusai, and Hiroshige, the collector
presented works by Max Klinger and Henri Rivière, among others.
The reception was very warm, as was press commentary:
The small, cramped space of the Lwów Society of Fine Arts was swarmingwith long unseen crowds. Every week the display changed, and every week
Mister Jasieński was there to inaugurate it with fiery talks in which, meeting the public face to face, he explained his goal to free Poles from foreign
influence so that they might develop, following the example of the Japanese,
their own applied and pure art that might lay the foundations of national
distinctiveness in all daily and exceptional needs.20
While closing the series with an exhibition which featured Ukiyo-e and paper
stencils (katagami), parallel to the presentation of selected paintings by Polishartists from his collection, he donated a dozen Ukiyo-e to the National Museumin Kraków.21
In time Jasieński’s Kraków apartment became the mecca of Polish lovers ofJapanese art, as well as of artists and collectors. It was also a meeting place for local
bohemians, the seat of ‘the Club’ founded by the collector to support the Societyof Polish Artists ‘Sztuka’ (Art) and, above all, by virtue of the collector’s own
request from 1903, granted in 1906, a new department of the National Museumin Kraków or, in short, the Feliks Jasieński Museum (fig. 3). The ‘museum’ wasmade up of a collection of contemporary Polish painting and sculpture, European and Polish graphic art, and decorative art that he had accumulated from‘I Have Shown You Japan …’87Figure 3. ‘Feliks Jasieński’s Museum’. Tadeusz Jabłoński Atelier, before 1914. Black-and-white photograph.
National Museum in Kraków (from Jasieński’s collection).

the 1880s. The Japanese collection, described in all articles devoted to ‘the newmuseum institution of Kraków’22 and shown at subsequent exhibitions, althoughstill exotic for part of the public and the critics was its integral part – as Jasieński
always stressed.
In 1904, at the Prints Exhibition organised in Kraków by the Polish Applied
Arts Society, in the section of foreign prints – which came almost exclusively
from Jasieński’s book collection – he showed publications on Japanese art, magazines with Japanese graphic design, the magazine Kokka, and woodblock prints
by Hokusai and Eishi.23
In 1906, to assert his donation and new role as curator of the ‘Department’of the National Museum, Jasieński prepared a great presentation of Japanese art
in the Palace of Art, the new seat of the Kraków Society of the Friends of Fine
Arts. On this occasion he published the Guide to the Japanese Department of the[Jasieński] Branch of the National Museum in Cracow.24 It was in fact a publication
prepared with great care, detailing both the collection and history of Japanese art,
its cover decorated with a reproduction of ‘Suzuki Kiitsu’s painting’. The screen
titled Flowers of the Four Seasons, attributed today to Kikoku, Kiitsu’s disciple, was
one of the most famous works in his collection. The exhibition was very successful,
although this time the earnings from ticket and catalogue sales did not cover the88

Agnieszka Kluczewska-Wójcik

organisation costs. ‘The Japanese exhibition was visited by 4,000 people. I sold […]200 elegantly published catalogues’25 – commented the disappointed collector.
However, Jasieński did not give up his activities as art populariser and exhibition curator. A part of his Japanese arts and crafts collection, placed on deposit,
was presented from 1906 in the Czapski Palace, a new department of the National
Museum. In 1911 he published the second volume of Manggha, which also contained essays on Japanese art, in sections in Józef Rettinger’s Monthly Magazineof Literature and Art, of which he was also the art editor.26 He delivered, as asummary, a series of lectures based on fragments of Manggha at Kraków’s City
Theatre in November 1911, and once more in 1913 in Kraków and Kyiv, and in
March 1914 in Warsaw. Each time the series began with a speech on Hokusai,
entitled The Rembrandt of the Far East.
He did all this without abandoning his goal of bestowing the Japanese, as wellas the Polish and European works of art, upon the nation. On 11 March 1920
Jasieński, finally, signed the act of donation of his collection to the National
Museum in Kraków. He inaugurated the new chapter of his activity by preparing
a great exhibition of Japanese art, opening a few days later in the Palace of Art,the seat of the Society of the Friends of Fine Arts. The exhibition, warmly received
by critics, attracted crowds of visitors interested in Japan or lured by echoes ofthe stormy, almost twenty-year-long negotiations between the city authorities,
the museum owner, and the collector. The latter, as was his custom, publishedan article in the press before the opening, explaining the objectives of the exhibition.27 He also delivered ‘a lecture on Japanese art, supported by items of themagnificent exhibition currently held in the rooms of the Palace of Art’.28 The
Japanese exhibition was accompanied by a presentation of the Polish part of hiscollection in the main gallery of the National Museum. The inaugural cycle wascrowned by an exhibition of textiles, opened in the Czapski Palace, department of
the museum. The collector presented ‘masterpieces of drawing, colour, and composition’, examples of two complementary oriental aesthetic systems: so-called
Polish sashes, Eastern rugs, batiks, Chinese and Japanese silks and embroideries,
and obi belts.29 The choice of these particular fragments of the collection was notaccidental: Jasieński wanted to emphasise once again that ‘there is only one art’,encompassing painting, sculpture, and decorative arts, and harmoniously combining the Western tradition with the artistic output of the Middle and Far East.
The last project in Jasieński’s long curatorial career – his artistic testament – wasa double exhibition of Japanese art, at the turn of 1923 and 1924, in the National
Museum. The first presented Ukiyo-e by Hiroshige; the second, Utamaro, Hokusai, and Kuniyoshi. Visitors could also admire selected examples of decorative Japanese art: lacquerware, inro (including those decorated by Korin), and netsuke.30
The collector did not live to see the creation of the new department of themuseum bearing his name, as outlined in the act of donation. He died in his apartment, on 6 April 1929, surrounded by works of art that he had bequeathed to thecity. By delaying the opening of the Jasieński Department, National Museum in‘I Have Shown You Japan …’89Kraków allowed itself to be overtaken by the Greater Poland Museum in Poznań
where there had been a permanent gallery of Oriental Decorative Arts (Chinese,
Japanese, Turkish, and Persian) since 1924. The first of its kind in Poland, it was
situated in two rooms on the ground floor of the museum building.31 The gallery
was created following the success of an exhibition of Japanese, Chinese, and East
Asian art, at the turn of 1922 and 1923 – one of the most popular temporary
exhibitions organised by the museum in the interwar period, it was visited byover eighteen thousand people.32 It was born from a wave of compassion brought
about after a great earthquake shook the Japanese islands, and it was based on
the donation of sixty-six works, gifted a year earlier to the museum by Leon
Wyczółkowski, a painter and Jasieński’s closest friend.33 Apart from objects fromthe museum’s collection, the exhibition also showed more than four hundred
works on loan from private collections from Greater Poland: Ukiyo-e, militaria,
lacquerware, bronzes, ceramics, and textiles.
The grand opening of the Feliks Jasieński Department of the National Museumin Kraków took place on 28 December 1934 in the Szołayski house. The works ondisplay included contemporary Polish paintings, kakemono, sculptures, selected
militaria, and ‘several works by the most famous Japanese master painter Hokusai’34 – a preview of the ‘Japanese department’ which Feliks Jasieński had dreamedof and strived to create for nearly thirty years.
From 1901 Jasieński systematically presented Japanese art to the Polish public,
being the only one to do so. Apart from those organised by Jasienski, there were
only two other exhibitions of Japanese art during this period.
The first one was an exhibition of fifty works of oriental ceramics from Henryk
Grohman’s collection, held in June 1911 in Zakopane, taking the opportunity ofan exhibition of graphic arts, accompanying a graphic arts competition of which
he was the founder. Just like Jasieński, Grohman strove to equate the position of
decorative arts and graphic arts with that of painting and sculpture:a range of kilims from local workshops with exquisite examples of ceramics
Korean, Japanese, Chinese as well as those of contemporary English andFrench origin from the collection of Mister Grohman gave the exhibition
room the look of real culture and thought that art, as we understood it, does
not only consist of oil painting that one can be a great artist of vast culture
and talent, and not paint, that not only paintings are artworks but so arecarpets, not only can one seek lines and atmosphere in frames on the wall
but in the pan as well, that no borders exist between applied art and pure art,
there are only different materials, that the artists manipulate.35
Two years later, in January 1913, the Society of the Encouragement of Fine Arts
in Warsaw hosted an exhibition of works by the contemporary Japanese artist
Wakana Utagawa, which was, as noted by critics, a further manifestation of theinterest awoken by Jasieński, ‘the Japanese from Kraków’.36
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There is no doubt, however, that the collector found the greatest number offollowers among painters, representatives of ‘Young Poland’, considered to be
the first Polish avant-garde. For his part, Jasieński consciously stimulated anddeveloped the Japanese passion as well as an understanding of Japanese art in
his artist friends, sharing with them not only his knowledge but also his contacts in the milieu of art dealers. His collection was always open to them, theworks it contained were often recorded on canvas, and Jasieński himself willingly
posed for portraits ‘en collectionneur’. He gifted those interested with doubles ofwoodblock prints, or he exchanged Japanese curio for works for his collectionof Polish art. In this way, he developed the Japanese collections of his friends
Wyczółkowski, Józef Pankiewicz, Józef Mehoffer, and Wojciech Weiss. Pankiewicz’s collection was destroyed during the war, Wyczółkowski donated his to theGreat Poland (today National Museum) in Poznań, and Mehoffer gave part of his
to the National Museum in Kraków. The remainder of it, just as Weiss’s collection,
are in the hands of the artist’s families. A great deal has already been written about
their collections and their Japanese-inspired work.37
The story of the ‘Japanese fever’ of the painter Stanisław Dębicki from Lwów
and the fate of his collection, second only to Jasieński’s, is still shrouded in mystery(fig. 4). It is only known that during his stay in Paris in 1890–1891, he established‘personal and very cordial relations with Japanese artists’.38 Who these friends were
and whether their circle included Seiki Kuroda, one of the most important representatives of the Yoga current (Western-style painting), who, like the Polish painter,studied at the Académie Colarossi, is difficult to determine without further research.
In any case, Dębicki returned from France as an expert in Japanese art, and thecontacts he made in Paris allowed him, as the only collector in Poland at that time,to enrich the collection of Ukiyo-e brought from France with others, imported
directly from Japan with the help of a specialised local agent. Jasieński, with whomDębicki was in constant contact, also used his assistance. Dębicki was also a link
between the circles of ‘Japanophiles’ in Lwów and Vienna.39 Some of the works
from his collection passed into Jasieński’s
hands; the rest was probably dispersed.
Both the Jasieński and Dębicki collections
with ‘Parisian’ roots, although not comparable in size, had one thing in common: they
were dominated by Ukiyo-e prints. Dębicki’s
much smaller collection was limited to them.
Jasieński’s collection consisted of over 6,500

Figure 4. Portraits of Stanisław Dębicki and Damazy Kotowski
by Stanisław Dębicki and Damazy Kotowski. 1893. Oil oncanvas. National Museum in Kraków. (See plate 11, p. 249)

‘I Have Shown You Japan …’91items – three quarters of which were woodblock prints, nearly two thirds ofwhich were landscape pictures, with three hundred plates and forty-seven albums
by Hokusai and nearly two thousand by Hiroshige.40 Japanese art collections ofFrench artists had a similar structure – especially those of Henri Rivière, Claude
Monet, and Theo Van Gogh, who mainly collected images of beauties and landscapes, and Auguste Rodin, who preferred portraits of actors.41
The graphic arts–oriented collections of Jasieński and Dębicki were thus fundamentally different from the collections of members of the Warsaw and Łódźbourgeoisie, headed by the aforementioned Grohman, which consisted mostlyof decorative arts.42 Undoubtedly reflecting the growing interest in Japan, thelatter did not influence the development of Polish Japonisme. On the contrary,
Jasieński’s collection became the living centre of dialogue with Japanese art in
Poland. Studying the Ukiyo-e collected by him, Polish painters and graphic artists
sought to be inspired, to have their artistic choices confirmed, to deepen theirknowledge, and then to creatively transform the principles of the Japanese aesthetics. Thanks to the collector’s popularisation activities, interest in this art, so
recently completely unknown in Poland, started to spread in ever larger circles.
It is worth emphasising that from the very beginning, Jasieński wanted toinclude his Japanese collection in the National Museum and not in the Museumof Decorative Arts or the Museum of Oriental Art, which was an exception rather
than the rule if compared with the fate of other private Asian art collections in
Europe, like those of Emile Guimet, Ferenc Hopp, or Vojta Náprstek. Jasieński
considered Japanese woodblock prints, paintings, sculptures, lacquerware, andtextiles an integral part of a bigger whole, encompassing Polish painting andsculpture as well as Polish and European graphic and decorative arts, equallyworthy to be placed in ‘the sanctuary’ of Polish culture which was – supposed
to be – the National Museum in Kraków. The fact that this was not an opinion
shared by the municipal authorities responsible for the museum was the main
reason why his battle for donation lasted so long.
The Jasieński Department was closed down after the Second World War, andhis collecting achievements were almost forgotten (fig. 5). Thereafter, the Japanese collection was presented only at temporary exhibitions, mostly in Poland
and in Japan. A renaissance of interest in Japanese art came at the end of the twentieth century and was associated, once again, with the collector. The Manggha
Centre of Japanese Art and Technology in Kraków was opened in 1994. The initiative came from the world-famous film director Andrzej Wajda. Its building was
designed by the Japanese Pritzker-winning architect Arata Isozaki, whose work,
though rooted in Japanese tradition, is open to other cultures and forms a bridge
between East and West. The Centre started as a branch of the National Museum,
implementing Jasieński’s ideas and presenting his collection, although it latertransformed into an independent museum, where his collection was deposited.
Its selected fragments are presented in temporary exhibitions organised by the
Manggha Museum and the National Museum in Kraków.
92

Agnieszka Kluczewska-Wójcik

Figure 5. National Museum in Kraków, Feliks Jasieński Department. 1934. Black-and-white photograph.
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe.

The first decades of the twenty-first century saw a number of exhibitions on
Japanese art organised by other Polish museums, including the exhibition Masterpieces of Japanese Art in Polish Collections, organised in 2014 by the Manggha
Museum and the National Museum in Warsaw.43 Private collectors, Jasieński’s successors, such as Jerzy Leskowicz, whose collection exhibited in Warsaw in 2017,
Kyoto and Aix-en-Provence in 2019, and at the Cernuschi Museum in Paris in
2020,44 are following in his footsteps, recalling the intercultural dialogue Jasieński
began in 1901: ‘I have shown you Japan so that you may learn to think of Polandas, for two thousand years, those artists have thought of Japan in Japanese’.45

NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.

Feliks Jasieński, ‘Z deszczu pod rynnę’ [‘From Rain under the Gutter’], Ilustracja Polska [Polish Illustration], no. 5 (1901): 90.
About Jasieński, see Agnieszka Kluczewska-Wójcik, Feliks ‘Manggha’Jasieński i jego kolekcja w Muzeum
Narodowym w Krakowie / Feliks ‘Manggha’ Jasieński and His Collection at the National Museum in
Krakow (Kraków: National Museum in Kraków, 2014).
Feliks Jasieński, ‘Przed I-szą wystawą sztuki japońskiej’ [‘Before the First Exhibition of Japanese Art’],Kurier Warszawski [The Warsaw Courier], no. 43 (1901), 1.
For more about the discovery of Japan in Poland, see Agnieszka Kluczewska-Wójcik, Japonia w kulturzei sztuce polskiej końca XIX i początków XX wieku [Japan in Polish Culture and Art at the End of the 19thand Beginning of the 20th Century] (Warsaw and Toruń: Polish Institute of World Art Studies and Tako
Publishing House, 2016).

‘I Have Shown You Japan …’

93

5.

6.
7.

8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.

24.
25.
26.

27.
28.
29.
30.

94

Stanisław Glezmer, Впечатления, соображения и выводы С. П. Глезмера … по поводу его поездки
в 1909 году по дальнему востоку (Манджурии, Китаю, Кореи и Японии), 29 ноября 1909 г.ф.
[Impressions, Reflections and Conclusions of S. P. Glezmer …. on his 1909 trip to the far east (Manjuria,
China, Korea and Japan), 29 November 1909] (St. Petersburg: [by the author, 1910]).
Stanisław Glezmer, Katalog przedmiotów znajdujących się w ‘Pawilonie japońskim’ w Strugach Ziemi
Sochaczewskiej, 1909–1914 [Catalogue of objects housed in the ‘Japanese Pavilion’ in Strugi in the
Sochaczew County, 1909-1914] (Warsaw: [by the author, 1914]).
For more about the background to this, see Agnieszka Kluczewska-Wójcik, ‘“Yellow Peril, Bright
Future”: Visual Arts and the Changing Perception of Japan in West and East Europe’, in Japonisme in theAustro-Hungarian Monarchy, ed. Mirjam Dénes, Györgyi Fajcsák, Piotr Spławski, and Toshio Watanabe(Budapest: Ferenc Hopp Museum of Asiatic Arts, 2020), 261–275.
Ignacy Matuszewski, ‘Malarstwo japońskie’, Tygodnik Ilustrowany, no. 49 (1900): 970–972.
Félix [Feliks Jasieński], Manggha. Promenades à travers le monde, l’art et les idées [Manggha. Strolls
through the world, art and ideas] (Warsaw and Paris: F. Vieweg and J. Fiszer, 1901).
Feliks Jasieński, quoted in: Püssari-Watàn, ‘U autora Mangghi’ [‘At the author of Manggha’], Życie I
Sztuka, [Life and Art], supplement to Kraj [The Country], no. 28 (1901): 322.
Feliks Jasieński, [handwritten note], in Objets d’art japonais et chinois, Peintures, estampes composant lacollection de Goncourt dont la vente aura lieu Hôtel Drouot (…) 1897 (…), Paris 1897, on the reverse of
the title page, National Museum in Kraków Library no. III 672.
Feliks Jasieński, Przed I-szą wystawą sztuki japońskiej, [‘Before the First Exhibition of Japanese Art.’],Kurier Warszawski [The Warsaw Courier], 1901, no. 43: 1; no. 44: 2; no. 45: 1−2.
‘Wystawa sztuki japońskiej’ [‘Exhibition of Japanese Art’], Kurier Warszawski, 1901, no. 45 (morning
edition), 1.
Tadeusz Jaroszyński, ‘Wystawa sztuki japońskiej (Zbiory Feliksa Jasieńskiego)’ [‘Exhibition of Japanese
Art. (Feliks Jasieński’s Collection)’] Tygodnik Ilustrowany [Illustrated Weekly], 1901, no 8: 154.
Tadeusz Jaroszyński, ‘Wystawa sztuki japońskiej’, 154.
Püssari-Watàn, 322.
Jasieński, ‘Przed I-szą wystawą sztuki japońskiej (Dokończenie.)’, 2.
Jasieński, ‘W kwestii drobnego nieporozumienia’ [‘On a minor misunderstanding’], Chimera (1901), t.
I, z. 2, s. 354–356.
Zenon Przesmycki, Drzeworyt japoński [‘Japanese Woodblock Prints’), Chimera (1901), t. I, no. 3,
p. 490–531.
Antoni Chołoniewski [‘Dwumiesięczny pobyt p. Jasieńskiego we Lwowie’ [Mr Jasieński’s two-monthstay in Lwów’)], Kraj [The Country], no. 1 (1902): 15.
Letter from Feliks Kopera, director of the National Museum, to Jasieński, dated 29 January 1901,
Archives of the Museum National in Kraków, Rkps S1/15.
Adam Łada-Cybulski, ‘Nowe muzeum w Krakowie’ [‘A new museum in Kraków’], Tygodnik Ilustrowany[Illustrated Weekly], no. 6 (1904): 105−106; Pełka [Chołoniewski], ‘Muzeum Feliksa Jasieńskiego’ [‘TheFeliks Jasieński Museum’], Kraj [The Country], no. 3 (1904): 3−5.
Wystawa drukarska w Krakowie (Urządzona staraniem Towarzystwa ‘Polska Sztuka Stosowana’ w
dawnym pałacyku hr. Czapskich w Krakowie. Od dnia 24 grudnia 1904 R. do 10 lutego 1905 R [Print
Exhibition in Cracow (Organised through the efforts of the Society ‘Polish Applied Arts’ in the former
palace of Count Czapski in Kraków. From 24 December 1904 to 10 February 1905)’], (Kraków: National
Museum in Kraków, 1904), 61−65 (exh. cat.).
Jasieński, Przewodnik po dziale japońskim Oddziału Muzeum Narodowego w Krakowie [Guide to the Japanese Department of the [Jasieński] Branch of the National Museum in Kraków] (Kraków: by the author,
1906).
Jasieński’s letter to Tadeusz Pini, dated 16 March 1906, National Library Warsaw, Rkps 2908 II.
Jasieński, ‘Manggha. Urywek z rękopisu (Tom drugi)’ [‘Manggha. An excerpt from the manuscript (Volume Two)’], Miesięcznik Literacki i Artystyczny [Literary and Artistic Monthly Magazine], no. 1 (1911):
71–85; no. 2: 166–186; no. 3: 312–320; no. 4: 405–414; no. 5: 507–516; no. 6: 611–620; no. 7: 94–100;
no. 8: 181–190; no. 9: 279–289; no. 10, s. 375–396; no. 11: 471–491.
Feliks Jasieński, ‘Wystawa japońska’ [‘Japanese exhibition’], Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny [The Illustrated Daily Courier], no. 72 (1920): 2.
[‘Zebranie towarzyskie w salach Pałacu Szt. Pięknych’] [‘Meeting in the Halls of the Palace of Fine Arts’],Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny [The Illustrated Daily Courier], no. 97 (1920): 6.
Manga [Feliks Jasieński], ‘Kontrakcya’ [‘Counteraction’], Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny [The Illustrated
Daily Courier], no. 230 (1920): 6–7.
Zastępca [Feliks Jasieński], ‘Hiroshige. Wystawa zbiorowa w Muzeum Narodowem od 4 listopada’[‘Hiroshige. Monographic exhibition at the National Museum from 4 November’], Czas [Time], 1923,
no. 244 (evening edition), 2; Zastępca [Feliks Jasieński], ‘Druga wystawa japońska w Muzeum Naro-

Agnieszka Kluczewska-Wójcik

31.
32.
33.

34.
35.
36.

37.

38.
39.
40.
41.
42.

43.
44.

45.

dowem od 30-go grudnia’ [‚Second Japanese exhibition at the National Museum from 30 December’],Czas [Time], 1923 (December) (press cutting) National Museum in Kraków Archives, no S1/6.
Muzeum Wielkopolskie w Poznaniu. Rocznik II za rok 1924 [The Greater Poland Museum in Poznań.
Yearbook II for the year 1924] (Poznań: Muzeum Wielkopolskie, 1926), 132.
Muzeum Wielkopolskie w Poznaniu. Rocznik I za rok 1923 [The Greater Poland Museum in Poznań.
Yearbook I for the year 1923] (Poznań: Muzeum Wielkopolskie: 1925), 60–61.
Wiesław Rządek (ed.), Ukiyo-e. Obraz przemijającego świata. Grafika japońska od XVIII do XX wieku[Ukiyo-e. The image of the floating world. Japanese woodblock printing from the 18th to the 20th century], (Poznań: National Museum in Poznań, 1994) (exh. cat.); Wojciech Lipowicz, Z kolekcji Leona
Wyczółkowskiego. Dar artysty dla Muzeum Wielkopolskiego w Poznaniu [From the Leon Wyczółkowski
Collection. A gift of the artist for the Greater Poland Museum in Poznań] (Bydgoszcz: Leon Wyczółkowski
District Museum, 2011).
Otwarcie Oddziału im. F. Jasieńskiego, Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny [The Illustrated Daily Courier],
no. 359 (1934): 1.
Jan Skotnicki, ‘Wystawa graficzna w Zakopanem’ [‘Print exhibition in Zakopane’], Sztuka [Art] (Lwów),
no. 3 (1911): 144−145.
Franciszek Siedlecki, ‘Wystawa obrazów Wakany Utagawy’ [‘Exhibition of Wakana Utagawa paintings’],
Tygodnik Ilustrowany [Illustrated Weekly], no. 5 (1913): 84−85; Jan Kleczyński, ‘Kronika. Sztuki plastyczne (Wakana Utagawa i jej przodkowie)’[‘Chronicle. Visual arts (Wakana Utagawa and her ancestors)’], Sztuka [Art], 1913, t. III, no. VIII, p. 80−82.
See inter alia: Piotr Spławski, ‘Japonisme in Polish Pictorial Arts (1885–1939)’ (PhD diss., Universityof Arts, London, 2013), http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/6205/. Anna Król, Japonizm Polski – Polish
Japanism (Kraków: Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology, 2011); Anna Król (ed.), Ten
krakowski Japończyk … Inspiracje sztuką Japonii w twórczości Wojciecha Weissa – That Krakow Japonist.
Japanese Art. Inspiration in the Work of Wojciech Weiss (Kraków: Manggha Museum of Japanese Art andTechnology, 2008) (exh. cat.).
Henryk Cepnik, ‘Stanisław Dębicki. Wspomnienie pośmiertne’ [‘Stanisłąw Dębicki. Obituary’], Gazeta
Lwowska [Lwów Gazette], no. 188 (1924): 3–4
For more on the Vienna collections and the enthusiasm for Japanese art, see Johannes Wieninger’s
article ‘Networks of Enthusiasm’ in this volume.
Jasieński’s collection consisted of 6,500 items, including over five thousand woodblock prints.
Geneviève Aitken and Marianne Delafond, La collection d’estampes japonaises de Claude Monet à Giverny[Claude Monet’s collection of Japanese prints at Giverny], (Paris: La Bibliothèque des Arts, 2003).
Berbelska Dorota, ‘O zbiorach artystycznych i mecenacie Heryka Grohmana’ [‘On the art collections
and patronage of Heryk Grohman’], in Ze zbiorów Henryka Grohmana. Grafika i rzemiosło artystyczne[From the Henryk Grohman collection. Prints and Arts and Crafts], (Łódź: Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi,
1998): 7–18.
Anna Król (ed.), Arcydzieła sztuki japońskiej w kolekcjach polskich – Masterpieces of Japanese Art inPolish Collections (Kraków: Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology, 2014, and Warsaw:
National Museum in Warsaw, 2015) (exh. cat.).
Katarzyna Maleszko (ed.), Podróż do Edo: japońskie drzeworyty Ukiyo-e z kolekcji Jerzego Leskowicza – Journey to Edo: Japanese Ukiyo-e prints form the Collection of Jerzy Leskowicz (Warsaw: National Museum in
Warsaw, 2017) (exh. cat.); Journey through ‘Nippon’ with Hiroshige and Hokusai from the Leskowicz Collection,
Hosomi Museum, Kyoto 2019; Anna Katarzyna Maleszko and Geneviève Aitken (eds.), Hokusai, Hiroshige,
Utamaro. Les grands maîtres du Japon. Collection Georges Leskowicz [Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utamaro. The
great masters of Japan. Georges Leskowicz Collection] (Aix-en-Provence: Centre d’art d’Aix-en-Provence,2019); Manuela Moscatiello (ed.), Voyage sur la Route de Kisokaidô de Hiroshige à Kuniyoshi [Journey on the
Kisokaidô Road from Hiroshige to Kuniyoshi], (Paris: Musée Cernuschi, 2020–2021) (exh. cat.).
Feliks Jasieński, ‘Z deszczu pod rynnę’, 90.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aitken, Geneviève, and Marianne Delafond. La collection d’estampes japonaises de Claude Monet à Giverny[Claude Monet’s collection of Japanese prints at Giverny]. Paris: La Bibliothèque des Arts, 2003.
Berbelska, Dorota. ‘O zbiorach artystycznych i mecenacie Heryka Grohmana [‘On the art collections andpatronage of Heryk Grohman’], In Ze zbiorów Henryka Grohmana. Grafika i rzemiosło artystyczne[From the Henryk Grohman collection. Prints and Arts and Crafts]. Łódź: Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi,
1998.

‘I Have Shown You Japan …’95Glezmer, Stanisław. Впечатления, соображения и выводы С. П. Глезмера … по поводу его поездки в 1909году по дальнему востоку (Манджурии, Китаю, Кореи и Японии), 29 ноября 1909 г.ф. [Impressions,
Reflections and Conclusions of S. P. Glezmer … on his 1909 trip to the Far East (Manjuria, China, Korea
and Japan), 29 November 1909]. St. Petersburg: by the author [1910]).
Glezmer, Stanisław. Katalog przedmiotów znajdujących się w ‘Pawilonie japońskim’ w Strugach Ziemi Sochaczewskiej, 1909–1914. [Catalogue of objects housed in the ‘Japanese Pavilion’ in Strugi in the Sochaczew
County, 1909-1914]. Warsaw: by the author [1914].
Jaroszyński, Tadeusz. ‘Wystawa sztuki japońskiej (Zbiory Feliksa Jasieńskiego)’ [‘Exhibition of Japanese Art.
(Feliks Jasieński’s Collection)’] Tygodnik Ilustrowany [Illustrated Weekly], 1901, no 8: 153-154.
Jasieński, Feliks. Manggha. Promenades à travers le monde, l’art et les idées. [Manggha. Strolls through theWorld, Art and Ideas]. Warsaw and Paris: F. Vieweg and J. Fiszer, 1901.
Jasieński, Feliks. ‘Manggha. Urywek z rękopisu (Tom drugi)’ [‘Manggha. An excerpt from the manuscript (Volume Two)’]. Miesięcznik Literacki i Artystyczny [Literary and Artistic Monthly Magazine], no. 1 (1911):
71–85; no. 2: 166–186; no. 3: 312–320; no. 4: 405–414; no. 5: 507–516; no. 6: 611–620; no. 7: 94–100;
no. 8: 181–190; no. 9: 279–289; no. 10: 375–396; no. 11: 471–491.
Jasieński, Feliks. Przed I-szą wystawą sztuki japońskiej, [‘Before the First Exhibition of Japanese Art.’], Kurier
Warszawski [The Warsaw Courier], no. 43 (1901): 1; no. 44: 2; no. 45: 1−2.
Jasieński, Feliks. Przewodnik po dziale japońskim Oddziału Muzeum Narodowego w Krakowie [Guide to theJapanese Department of the {Jasieński} Branch of the National Museum in Kraków]. Kraków: by theauthor, 1906.
Jasieński, Feliks. ‘Z deszczu pod rynnę’ [‘From Rain under the Gutter’], Ilustracja Polska [Polish Illustration],no. 5 (1901): 88-90.
Kluczewska-Wójcik, Agnieszka. Feliks ‘Manggha’Jasieński i jego kolekcja w Muzeum Narodowym w Krakowie/ Feliks ‘Manggha’ Jasieński and His Collection at the National Museum in Kraków. Kraków: National
Museum in Kraków, 2014.
Kluczewska-Wójcik, Agnieszka. Japonia w kulturze i sztuce polskiej końca XIX i początków XX wieku [Japan in
Polish Culture and Art at the End of the 19th and Beginning of the 20th Century]. Warsaw and Toruń:Polish Institute of World Art Studies and Tako Publishing House, 2016.
Kluczewska-Wójcik, Agnieszka. ‘“Yellow Peril, Bright Future”: Visual Arts and the Changing Perception ofJapan in West and East Europe’. In Japonisme in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, edited by Mirjam
Dénes, Györgyi Fajcsak, Piotr Spławski, and Toshio Watanabe, 261–275. Budapest: Ferenc Hopp
Museum of Fine Arts, 2020.
Król, Anna, ed. Arcydzieła sztuki japońskiej w kolekcjach polskich – Masterpieces of Japanese Art in Polish Collections. Cracow: Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology and Warsaw: National Museum in
Warsaw, 2014. Exhibition catalogue.
Król, Anna. Japonizm Polski – Polish Japanism. Cracow: Manggha Museum of Japense Art and Technology,
2011. Exhibition catalogue.
Król, Anna, ed. Ten krakowski Japończyk … Inspiracje sztuką Japonii w twórczości Wojciecha Weissa – That
Krakow Japonist. Japanese Art Inspiration in the Work of Wojciech Weiss. Cracow: Manggha Museumof Japense Art and Technology, 2008. Exhibition catalogue.
Lipowicz, Wojciech. Z kolekcji Leona Wyczółkowskiego. Dar artysty dla Muzeum Wielkopolskiego w Poznaniu[From the Leon Wyczółkowski Collection. A gift of the artist for the Greater Poland Museum in Poznań].
Bydgoszcz: Leon Wyczółkowski District Museum, 2011. Exhibition catalogue.
Maleszko, Katarzyna, ed. Podróż do Edo: japońskie drzeworyty Ukiyo-e z kolekcji Jerzego Leskowicza [Journey
to Edo: Japanese Ukiyo-e prints form the Collection of Jerzy Leskowicz]. Warsaw: National Museum in
Warsaw, 2017. Exhibition catalogue.
Maleszko, Anna Katarzyna, and Geneviève Aitken, eds. Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utamaro. Les grands maîtres duJapon. Collection Georges Leskowicz [Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utamaro. The great masters of Japan. Georges
Leskowicz Collection]. Aix-en-Provence: Caumont Centre d’art d’Aix-en-Provence, Culturespace, 2019.
Exhibition catalogue. Paris: In Fine Editions d’art, 2019.
Püssari-Watàn, ‘U autora Mangghi’ [‘At the author of Manggha’], Życie I Sztuka, [Life and Art], supplement to
Kraj [The Country], no. 28 (1901): 322-323.
Rządek, Wiesław. Ukiyo-e. Obraz przemijającego świata. Grafika japońska od XVIII do XX wieku [Ukiyo-e. The
image of the floating world. Japanese woodblock printing from the 18th to the 20th century]. Poznań:National Museum, 1994. Exhibition catalogue.
Spławski, Piotr. ‘Japonisme in Polish Pictorial Arts (1885–1939)’. PhD diss., University of Arts, London, 2013.
http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/6205/.

96

Agnieszka Kluczewska-WójcikNETWORKS OF ENTHUSIASM FOR JAPANJohannes Wieninger

STARTING WITH THE WORLD FAIRS
Although there is no clear, general way to explain how currents and movements
come about within art history, they all have one thing in common: people arealways the ones who set movements in motion, who live their interests and enthusiasm and inspire others. This contribution retraces personal networks that haveemerged through friendships, passions, and shared business interests. Unlike mostnineteenth-century relationships between European and non-European countries, the connection with Japan was less sustained by colonial aspiration. A kindof ‘common sense’ was the basis for close cooperation and contacts across borders.
Looking at ‘Japonisme’, one of the first international, transcontinental art
movements in the nineteenth century, the connections between political interests, personal preferences, and business acumen can be shown across borders – a‘network of art’ that covered the European continent (fig. 1). A brief look at thehistory of East–West relations brings us back to 1853. Even if Japan was not isolated from the rest of the world for centuries, as is often claimed, this date marksa turning point in Japanese history. Because of the entry of a US gunboat under
Commander Perry into the Bay of Edo, the country was forced to undertake
long-discussed changes in politics and economy. It took Western countries as an
example for individual steps, and it even invited ‘advisers’ into the country. Thisapproach was not without controversy, because it brought revolutionary changes
in social and cultural spheres of life with it.
Diplomatic missions were opened in the new capital, and Rutherford Alcock(1809–1879), the first British consul, arrived in Edo as early as 1859. Parallel tohis diplomatic and economic duties, Alcock also dedicated himself to exploring
the country and started collecting artefacts in the hopes of representing this distant country’s culture and way of life in Europe.1 In 1862 parts of his collection
were shown at the London Exhibition – to the great horror of a Japanese delegation that visited this show. The Japan Exhibition at the Paris world fair in 1867 was
supported by the lords of Satsuma and Nabeshima; this was the first self-portrayalof Japan, although not yet official.2
Networks of Enthusiasm for Japan

97Tokyo / Heinrich (& Alexander) von Siebold
1

Hamburg / Justus Brinckmann

Dresden / Kunstgewerbemuseum

132

Hamburg / Shinkichi Hara
12

Berlin / Hermann Pächter
Kunsthandlung, previously
Wagner'sche Kunsthandlung

3
4

Paris / S. Bing 11

6

Paris / Tadamasa Hayashi

Leipzig / Völkerkundemuseum
5

Bremen / Übersee Museum
Venice / Enrico Bardi

109

Dresden / Kunstsalon Ernst Arnold

78

Hamburg / Museum fürVölkerkunde

Vienna / Arthur von Scala

1

Tokyo / Heinrich von Siebold (1852–1908), second son of Philipp Franz von Siebold, brother ofAlexander von Siebold (1846–1911).
Since 1872 with the Austro-Hungarian Legation in Tokyo.
1873: Translator at the Vienna world Fair
1889: His collections were presented to the Naturhistorisches Museum, now at the Weltmuseum(Museum of Ethnology).
1892/ 1905: Donations to the Oriental Museum and the Museum for Art and Industry, now
MAK-Museum of Applied Art in Vienna.
1893: Consultant for the collection of Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand.
1889: Consultant for the Baldi collection in Venice.
Wanted to sell his Katagami collection to the Völkerkundemuseum in Leipzig.

2

Dresden / Kunstgewerbemuseum
1889: Purchase of the Katagami collection for 2400 Mark from Wagner’sche Kunsthandlung Berlin,
probably acquired from Alexander von Siebold (1846–1911).

3

Berlin / Kunsthandlung Hermann Pächter (1839–1902), previously Wagner’sche Kunsthandlung.

4

Leipzig / Völkerkundemuseum
1908: Wanted to buy a Katagami collection from Heinrich von Siebold, later sold by Trau, Vienna.

5

Bremen / Übersee Museum
1907–08: Hugo H. Schauinsland, the founding director of the Übersee Museum Bremen, started afund raising campaign in Bremen to buy parts of the Bourbon Bardi collection.

6

Venice / Enrico Bardi (1851–1905)
1889: Acquired his collection in Japan.
1906: Auctions by Trau Vienna.
1908: Description of the collection in five volumes of hand-written catalogues by Justus Brinkmann,compiled, with assistance of Shinkichi Hara.

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Johannes Wieninger

7

Hamburg / Museum für Völkerkunde
1908: Director Thilenius acquired eighty-one lots (some of them containing up to 38 objects) fromthe Bardi collection.

8

Vienna / Arthur von Scala (1845–1909)
1868–1871: Taking part in the Austro-Hungarian expedition to East Asia.
1873: Secretary of the Oriental Committee at the Vienna World Fair.
1874–1897: Founding Director of the Oriental Museum (later Trade Museum).
1897–1908: Director of the Museum for Art and Industry.

9

Dresden / Kunstsalon Ernst Arnold
Since 1893 showing contemporary art.
1895: Exhibition Japanischer Holzschnitte 17. – 19. Jahrhundert organized by S. Bing.

10

Paris / Tadamasa Hayashi (1853–1906)
1878: Arrives in Paris.
1894: Donates Tsuba collection to Musée du Louvre for its Extrême-Orient section.
1900: General commissioner of the Japanese art section at the World 's Fair in Paris.
Trading and selling Ukiyo-e worldwide.

11

Paris / S. Bing (1838–1905)
1854: Arrives in Paris.
1888–1891: Publisher of Le Japon artistique.
1895: Exhibition Japanischer Holzschnitte 17. – 19. Jahrhundert at Kunstsalon Ernst Arnold,
Dresden.
1895–1904: Maison de l‘Art Nouveau.
1901: Specialausstellung Hokusai in k.k. Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie, Vienna.

12

Hamburg / Shinkichi Hara (1868–1934)
1896: Assistant of Justus Brinckmann.
1902: Publication of Die Meister Der Japanischen Schwertzierathen with Brinckmann.

13

Hamburg / Justus Brinckmann (1843–1915)
1873: Expert at the Vienna World Fair.
1885 and 1900: Juror at the World Fairs in Antwerp and Paris.
1874: Founder of Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.
Since 1883: Purchases from S. Bing in Paris and R. Wagner'sche Kunsthandlung in Berlin.
1888 - 1891: Publication of Japanischer Formenschatz with S. Bing.
1902: Publication of Die Meister der Japanischen Schwertzierathen with Shinkichi Hara.
1908: Description of the Bardi collection in five volumes of hand-written catalogues, with assistanceof Shinkichi Hara.

Figure 1. The Japan network of art. Illustration by the author.

Networks of Enthusiasm for Japan

99

It was only after the country’s transition from shogunate to monarchy in 1868that the Japanese government began to organise presentations on an international
level itself. When Japan was invited to take part in the Vienna world fair, hectic
preparations began, with European consultants asked to select the products tobe shown. The German engineer Gottfried Wagener (1831–1892) had been in
Japan as an economic adviser, primarily on the modernisation of the porcelainindustry, since 1868. He oversaw the Japanese exhibition at the Vienna world fair,
and above all, his advice not to conform to Western tastes led to the success of thisfirst state-controlled presentation.3

TRADING AND COLLECTING
Japan had pushed itself into the consciousness of the West and, as a result, begana targeted cultural policy: the country exported arts and crafts, promoted handicrafts, and participated in as many international exhibitions as possible. In addition to the world exhibitions, which were taking place increasingly frequently,
there were many small competitions in which Japanese artists took part and fromwhich they brought home medals of honour for their achievements and ambition. The Internationale Ausstellung von Arbeiten aus edlen Metallen und Legirungen (International Exhibition of Works Made of Precious Metals and Alloys) in
Nuremberg in 1885 is one example of this increased presence of Japanese art andartists on the international stage.4 Ninety-six (!) Japanese artists, craftspeople, andmanufacturers are listed by name in the exhibition catalogue. Leopold Gmelin,
professor at the Munich School of Applied Arts, describes them with great enthusiasm: ‘The bronze works exhibited by the Japanese in the modern department
are so perfect beyond all definitions, especially technically, that their works haveto be called the highlight of the exhibition’.5

FROM TOKYO TO VIENNA, BERLIN, AND DRESDENAt that time, in the 1880s, two ‘Japan-friendly’ centres had already emerged,
Vienna and Paris. Museums and public collections as well as trade fairs and galleries were active and cooperative in the promotion of Japanese arts and crafts on
the world stage. Starting with the Vienna world fair in 1873, European collectors
began to establish or strengthen their collections of Japanese objects. Particularly noteworthy among these collectors are the brothers Alexander and Heinrich
von Siebold, who – encouraged and influenced by their father, Philipp Franz vonSiebold (1796–1866) – worked in the diplomatic services in Japan and became
important personalities in collecting and trading. Alexander (1846–1911) is best
known as a diplomat at the British Legation and later in the service of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
100

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His younger brother, Heinrich (1852–1908), initially worked as an interpreterat the Austro-Hungarian Legation in Tokyo; he was also available as an interpreter for the Japanese delegation at the Vienna world fair and played a decisiverole in the dedication of objects and works of art to European museums. To thedispleasure of his superiors, Heinrich ran an art business in Tokyo and ‘supplied’
many travellers to Japan with souvenirs and works of art. He was also active as
a companion on trips through the country and thus promoted the emergenceof extensive Japanese collections in Europe. Heinrich also used his contacts in
the highest circles to build an eminent collection, which he dedicated in several
tranches to Viennese museums and as individual objects to other collections in
the German-speaking area.
Throughout their careers, the Siebold brothers, along with numerous otheractors in the interconnected ‘Japan network’, contributed to Asian art collections
throughout Europe, including in Vienna, Berlin, and Dresden.
In 1889 Heinrich dedicated an extensive ethnographic collection to the newly
founded Natural History Museum in Vienna, which – in accordance with the attitude at the time – also included an ethnographic department, which later became
one of the fundaments of the Museum für Völkerkunde (Museum of Ethnology),
today’s Weltmuseum Wien, founded in 1928.6
Heinrich had been in contact with Arthur Scala (1845–1909), the director of
the Oriental Museum (Orientalisches Museum) in Vienna, which was renamed
Trade Museum (Handelsmuseum) in 1886. Scala took part in the imperial Austro-Hungarian expedition to India, China, Siam, and Japan; was secretary of thecommittee for the Orient and East Asia during the Vienna world fair; and in
1874 became the founding director of the Oriental Museum. It was also throughpersonal connections that Heinrich made an important dedication to the Trade
Museum in 1892; his contribution still constitutes one of the largest Japanese collections in Europe.
Of the many objects in the Trade Museum that came from Heinrich, one group
stands out: shrine fragments from the burial complex of the Tokugawa shoguns
around the Zojoji in Shiba/Tokyo. Even in Japan these objects would be a sensation: these fragments are the only remains of the cemetery, which was destroyedin 1923 and 1945. The two representations of
the lions (shishi) from the memorial shrine built
around 1710 can be attributed to Kano Tsunenobu (1636–1713) (fig. 2).

Figure 2. Shishi (Lion) attributed to Kano Tsunenobu(1636–1713). Edo period, ca. 1710. Colour and gold on wood. Partof a Tokugawa Memorial Shrine in Shiba (Edo/Tokyo). Courtesyof MAK – Museum of Applied Art, Vienna, inv. no. OR 3930–2.
Collection Heinrich von Siebold. (See plate 12, p. 250)
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101

Figure 3. Katagami. Edo period,
nineteenth century. Paper
cut-out. Image courtesy of
MAK –Museum of Applied Art,
Vienna, inv. no. OR 3925–5692.
Collection Heinrich von Siebold.
(See plate 13, p. 251)

Two other groups of objects in the Viennese collections illustrate the international connections of the Siebold brothers. A large collection of more than 2,700
ink paintings gives insight into the iconography of East Asian painting and shows
striking parallels to a similar collection – that of Erwin Baelz (1849–1913), whichis kept in the Linden-Museum Stuttgart.7 The second group of objects concerns
the collection of approximately nine thousand Japanese stencils (katagami) (fig. 3).
The Kunstgewerbemuseum in Dresden acquired a much larger collection in1889 from the art dealer R. Wagner in Berlin.8 Research by Wolfgang Scheppe,
curator of the 2014 exhibition The Logic of Rain in the Japanese Palais in Dresden,
revealed the likelihood that these more than sixteen thousand katagami foundtheir way to Europe via Alexander von Siebold (personal information).9
With the dissolution of the Vienna Trade Museum in 1907, Scala transferreda significant portion of the Siebold collection to the Museum of Art and Industry,of which he had become the director.10
Another art enthusiast that Heinrich von Siebold advised was Enrico Bardi(1851–1905). From 1887 to 1889, Bardi travelled through East Asia, including a
six-month stay in Japan, which was long enough for Bardi to accumulate a palace-filling collection. Some of Bardi’s collection has been lost, but the rest still
forms the core of the Museo d’arte orientale (Asian Art Museum) in Venice.11
After Bardi’s death, Justus Brinckmann (1843–1915), a museum director who wasthen active throughout Europe, prepared the estate catalogue.12
We already come across Brinckmann’s name as a commissioner at the Vienna
world fair in 1873, where he was able to establish many contacts with Hamburg:
as early as 1874 he was the founding director of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Museum of Arts and Crafts) there. His contacts were not only related toViennese museums and galleries, but he became a bridge builder between France
and the German-speaking countries. The most important person for him was S.
Bing (1838–1905).

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PARIS, LONDON, AND HAMBURG: LE JAPON ARTISTIQUE
Bing, born in Hamburg, moved to Paris in 1854, where he ran the family business Bing et Renner. Connections to his brother-in-law’s commercial activities
in Tokyo and travel in 1880 and 1881 led Bing to import enormous amountsof Japanese objects and works of art; these activities led to the wide availability of Japanese objects in Europe, which contributed to continent-wide enthusiasm for Japan. Bing became an important supplier of Asian objects for major
European museums, and his magazine, Le japon artistique, which he publishedsimultaneously in three languages, became a first-class source of information
for many artists, collectors, and art lovers. Together with Bing, Brinckmann was
responsible for the German edition – Der Japanische Formenschatz.13 As an editor,
Brinckmann was Bing’s partner; as a museum director, he was Bing’s client. Bingprovided the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Hamburg with numerous objects.
Above all, the excellent collection of Japanese tea ceramics must be mentioned;
Brinckmann acquired around 150 ceramics from Bing (fig. 4).14
Another person connected with Bing is Hayashi Tadamasa (1853–1906).
Thanks to his knowledge of foreign languages, Hayashi came to Paris in 1878 asinterpreter and translator for the Japanese art dealer Wakai Kenzaburo (1834–1908). He saw his future in Paris and set up his own business dealing in Japanese
works of art. With his contacts with Parisian artists, Hayashi became a source ofinspiration for Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and many others. From the 1880s onwards, he ran his art trade, specialising in Ukiyo-e andhandicrafts of other materials: coloured woodcuts of the highest quality marked
with his stamp can be found in the most important collections worldwide. His
importance and efficiency were also recognised by the Japanese government, andhe was a commissioner for the Paris 1889 and Chicago 1893 world fairs before
being appointed Commissioner-General of the Japanese Pavilion at the 1900
Paris world fair. Not only that: he became the editor of the first Japanese-authoredart history of Japan published in a Western language.15 No matter how honourable
this task was, it was not very satisfying for Hayashi, who had to leave out the Japanese colour woodcuts; he wasn’t evenallowed to mention them because theJapanese government didn’t want to be
represented by pictures of actors andprostitutes. To get an impression of

Figure 4. Tea bowl, Black Raku ware. Edo period,
seventeenth century. Image courtesy of Museum
für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, inv. no. 1901.271.
(See plate 14, p. 251)
Networks of Enthusiasm for Japan

103Hayashi’s own collection and his ‘commodities’, consult the auction catalogues
written by Bing.16
In addition to the objects, such as katagami and sumie, mainly collected by theart enthusiasts mentioned above, there is another group of objects that is kept inlarge numbers in almost all European collections: sword guards (tsuba), and it isprecisely this type of object that leads us to London, Paris, Hamburg, and maybe
Vienna. Tsuba were well known as early as at the London world fair in 1862,
where the small metalwork objects attracted attention due to their colourful variations of metals, generating admiration for these attractive metalwork objects,
which in the following years were exported to Europe in large numbers.
In 1894 Hayashi donated a considerable collection of tsuba to the Louvre,
which – remarkably – was accompanied by a published catalogue.17 Brinckmann
also acquired many sword guards for the Museum of Arts and Crafts, and in1896 he was able to engage Hara Shinkichi (1868–1934) to catalogue and publish
them.18 In the foreword to the publication, Hara outlines the origin of the objects
and thus reveals a ‘tsuba network’:
The Vienna World Exhibition of 1873, where we laid the foundation for theJapanese collection of the Hamburg Museum of Arts and Crafts, did not offer
any opportunity to purchase Japanese guard plates and sword ornaments.
Only after the ban on carrying swords was issued in peacetime in 1876 did
Japanese swords and their accessories reach Europe in larger numbers. The
R. WAGNER’sche Kunsthandlung in Berlin brokered the first purchases for
us at the beginning of the 1880s. Its recently deceased owner, Herr Hermann
Paechter, subsequently rendered great service in supplying German collections with Japanese antiquities. A stay by the director in Paris in the autumnof 1883 opened up what was then the most important market for Japaneseart. Mr S. Bing’s action, conducted with as much expertise as taste, offered an
exceedingly rich selection of sword ornaments, in addition to other actions
existing at the time that have since been received as a result of a lack of supplies. To introduce the study of these, Mr S. Bing’s exquisite personal collection was best suited, while the public museums in Paris did not then collect
Japanese antiquities. On that occasion, Mr Tadamasa Hayashi proved to be
a competent adviser for reading the artists’ names and explaining the representations on the cover sheets, the same who later, when Mr Bing gave up
his Japanese shop, devoted himself entirely to ‘l’Art nouveau’, to devote to thenoblest dealings with Japanese antiquities, who became adviser to the mostimportant Parisian collectors and completed his career in France as Imperial
Japanese Government Commissioner for the World Exhibition of 1900.19
Again we encounter Wagner’s art shop in Berlin, and once more connections to
the Siebold brothers remain speculative. The Viennese collection of Heinrich vonSiebold in the Museum of Applied Arts contains more than one hundred tsuba
104

Johannes Wieninger

(out of a total 480 tsuba at the Museum of Applied Arts). Hara’s work is still relevant today, and it should be noted that large tsuba collections still lie dormant instorerooms around the world. Bing and Hayashi were also active in the exhibitionbusiness in the last decade of the nineteenth century; they made objects available,
edited catalogues, and acted as consultants. Two exhibitions at prominent locations deserve special mention: an exhibition of Japanese colour woodcuts at the
Art Salon Ernst Arnold in Dresden and an exhibition of Hokusai’s works at theMuseum for Art and Industry in Vienna.20
Since 1893 the renowned gallery Art Salon Ernst Arnold in Dresden has
focused its programme on contemporary art, so it is remarkable that in 1895 an
exhibition of Japanese colour woodcuts was shown with the help of Bing.21 Bing
endowed this exhibition with first-class prints, and it seems as though museum
directors and collectors made the pilgrimage to Dresden to buy from Arnold –and to make contacts. The Austrian Museum of Art and Industry acquired thecomplete album Mirror of the New Beauty Contest of the Courtesans by Yoshiwara
and Their Calligraphy, made in 1784 by Kitao Masanobu, whose prints were all
originally bound as leporello and in the best quality – a one-off but also very
expensive acquisition.
Bing’s connections to the Arnold Salon and its ‘Japan programme’ remained
intact. Scala, who left the Trade Museum for the Museum of Art and Industry in
1897, invited the Arnold Salon to show works at a guest exhibition in Vienna. Thiswas held in 1899, and the museum acquired twenty-six prints, including five withHayashi’s stamp! (In total, the Viennese museum acquired more than two hundred
prints from the Art Salon Ernst Arnold.) In 1901 we meet Bing again: the largest
exhibition of Hokusai’s work to date took place in the Vienna Museum for Art andIndustry, a sales exhibition organised by a Viennese art dealer where 630 works
were exhibited. The foreword to the catalogue states: ‘the lovable support that Mr
S. Bing in Paris gave us through advice and the provision of the works we needed’.22

NETWORK ENDING
In the first decade of the twentieth century, this Japan network, which spanned
the continent for twenty years, broke up. Heinrich von Siebold tried to sell the
majority of the remainder of his collection, so he negotiated with the EthnologicalMuseum in Leipzig for the sale of twenty thousand katagami. Unfortunately it
never came to that: he died in August 1908, and his collection was then sold in asales campaign in Vienna.
His congenial Viennese partner Scala retired as museum director in 1909 anddied just a few months later. Bardi, who died in 1905, was able to make his collection public in a Venetian palace. During the turmoil of war between 1914 and1918, Bardi’s collection became a subject of dispute between Italy and Austria.
Luckily, large parts have been preserved in the Museo d’arte orientale in Venice.
Networks of Enthusiasm for Japan

105

In the same year, 1905, S. Bing died; he was the most important ‘motor’ of theJapan network, who infected all of Europe with his enthusiasm. After selling partsof his collection at the 1902 Paris auctions, Hayashi returned to Japan in 1905
with what remained of his collection. He died only a year later, but part of hiscollection found its way back to Europe: Otto Kümmel (1874–1952) became an
assistant to Wilhelm Bode (1845–1929) in Berlin in 1906 and, from 1906 to 1909,
went to Japan with Ernst Grosse (1862–1927), who was sent to acquire objects for
the Berlin Asia Collection, which Bode also supported.
Correspondence between Grosse and Kümmel in the 1890s shows that Kümmel was already interested in Japanese art and that he had been to Paris, among
other places, to study the market and its collections. With these two people aturning point in the approach to the art of East Asia, and Japan in particular, canbe seen. One – Grosse – still had close contacts with Hayashi and Bing, so he wasperipherally involved in the Japan network; the other – Kümmel – was a polyglot,
and he was scientifically and museologically trained and interested. He preferred
to explore the country himself and tried to build a collection systematically. In
Japan they were fortunate to acquire for Berlin important pieces from the collection of the recently deceased Hayashi.23 Brinckmann remained director of theMuseum of Art and Industry in Hamburg until his death in 1915. He was the last
major networker from the late nineteenth century, but the loss of his partners
slowed his activities.
The time after the First World War was not only a major turning point inpolitics. Travel and direct contact over long distances became easier, and expeditions were equipped to explore and collect artworks and testimonies from distantcountries. Interest in Japan waned, and museums and collectors turned to China’s
history and new archaeological discoveries. This development was summarisedin the foreword of a Viennese exhibition catalogue in 1922:
this overestimation of Japanese applied arts in the past few decades hasof course not been surpassed in recent years, and people are now turning
decisively from the Romans to the Greeks of the East. This is by no means
intended to belittle Japan’s contribution to East Asian art, but rather to put
it in the right light.24
The network of enthusiasm for Japan in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Europe reveals that, during this time, a large number of works ofart flowed from Japan and that the image of this East Asian country in the Westhas been shaped by this accumulation of Japanese works in Western collections
at the turn of the twentieth century. Some of the protagonists – such as Hayashi
or Alexander von Siebold – were able to work for both the Western and the Japanese side. Hayashi worked as an art dealer and as a Japanese commissioner at theParis world fair, and Alexander von Siebold began his career in the service of the
British, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian legations, but switched to the Japanese106

Johannes Wieningergovernment, among other things, to organise Japanese participation in world
fairs and to renegotiate unequal treaties.
Although the West – above all the United States and Great Britain, althoughother states followed in these efforts – tried to establish a colonialist relationshipin its trade policy with Japan, areas such as public administration and militaryaffairs remained unaffected by these unequal agreements. Cultural exchange isnever a one-way activity – especially the example of European–Japanese relationships can show intensive interactions. The building of rich collections went handin hand with the interest of many artists in Japanese art, and at the same timea kind of parallel to Western Japonisme emerged in Japan itself: new Westernthemes and techniques changed the visual arts in Japan, and academic education
split into two directions – Japanese (Nihonga) and Western painting (Yoga).25
As the twentieth century progressed, official Japan gradually decreased thesystem of European and US ‘advisers and trainers’, became more assertive internationally, and began to focus on inter-Asian politics. Of course, this also affected
Japanese art and culture. The ‘West’ reoriented likewise: artistic and art historicalinterests shifted to China, South, and Southeast Asia.
Although I have begun to sketch the pan-European, even intercontinental
cooperation in the collection of Asian art, this mapped network of Japanese
enthusiasts in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century is not complete andneeds to be expanded.

NOTES
1.
2.
3.

4.

5.
6.

7.

Rutherford Alcock, The Capital of the Tycoon: A Narrative of a Three Years’ Residence in Japan. 2 vols.
(London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1863).
Japan and the 1867 Paris Exposition symposium at Maison franco-japonaise, Tokyo, 19 November 2017; for more information, see Sano Kentaro, ‘Japan and the 1867 Paris Exposition’, TJJ Online,
9 March 2018, https://www.japanjournal.jp/society/pt20180309170702.html.
Catalog der kaiserlich japanischen Ausstellung (Vienna: Japanischen Ausstellungs-Commission, 1873),
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100329989 (exh. cat.); Herbert Fux, Japan auf der Weltausstellung
in Wien in 1873 (Vienna: Museum of Applied Arts, 1973) (exh. cat.); Arts of East and West from World
Expositions: 1855–1900. Paris, Vienna, Chicago (Tokyo: Tokyo National Museum, 2004) (exh. cat.).
Internationale Ausstellung von Arbeiten aus edlen Metallen und Legirungen. Offizieller Katalog: Herausgegeben vom Bayrischen Gewerbemuseum in Nürnberg (Nuremburg: Verlagsanstalt des Bayr. Gewerbemuseums, 1885) (exh. cat.), https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb00010446?page=,1;Sybille Girmond, ‘Die Rezeption Japans. Die “Internationale Ausstellung von Arbeiten aus edlen Metallen und Legirungen” in Nuernberg 1885. Teil I Metallarbeiten’, Ostasiatische Zeitschrift 6 (2003): 32–48,
39.
Leopold Gmelin, ‘Internationale Ausstellung von Arbeiten aus edlen Metallen und Legierungen’ in
Nuernberg 1885’, Zeitschrift des Kunst-Gewerbe-Vereins zu München 11/12 (1885): 91.
On the three Siebolds, see Josef Kreiner (ed.), 200 years of Siebold: The Japanese Collections of Philipp
Franz and Heinrich von Siebold (Tokyo: Edo Tokyo Museum, 1996) (exh. cat.); Peter Noever, Johannes
Wieninger, and Bettina Zorn (eds.), Das alte Japan: Spuren und Objekte der Siebold-Reisen (Munich:
Prestel, 1997) (exh. cat.); Kaori Hidaka and Bettina Zorn, Japan zur Meiji-Zeit: die Sammlung Heinrich
von Siebold (Vienna: KMH-Museumsverband, 2020) (exh. cat.); Kaori Hidaka and Bettina Zorn (eds.),
Transmitters of Another Culture II: The Collection of Heinrich von Siebold (Kyoto: Rinsen Shoten, 2021).
Doris Croissant, Japanese Paintings in the Linden-Museum Stuttgart: A Selection from the Baelz Collection, 2 vols. (Stuttgart and Tokyo: Linden-Museum Stuttgart and Kodansha, 1991).

Networks of Enthusiasm for Japan

107

8.

9.
10.

11.

12.
13.

14.
15.
16.

17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.

24.
25.

108

Unfortunately, not much is known about R. Wagner. See Anja Walter-Ris, ‘Der moderne Kunsthandelan Spree und Rhein von 1850–1918’, in Kunstleidenschaft im Dienst der Moderne. Die Geschichte derGalerie Nierendorf, Berlin/New York, 1920–1995, ed. Anja Walter-Ris (Zurich: Interpublishers, 2003), n.
52: ‘Hermann Pächter (1839–1902), originally a brewer, teamed up with the Berlin publishing house R.
Wagner in the early eighties, which he slowly transformed into an art cabinet. East Asian, Japanese art,
carpets, decorative arts of all kinds were traded’.
Wolfgang Scheppe, email message to author.
Johannes Wieninger: ‘Er brachte viel Eigenartiges und Notwendiges mit: Arthur von Scala als Mittler
zwischen Ost und West und die Grundlegung der Asiensammlung des heutigen Museums fuer angewandte Kunst 1868 – 1909’, in Kunst und Industrie: die Anfaenge des Museums fuer Angewandte Kunst
in Wien, ed. Peter Noever (Ostfildern: Oesterreichisches Museum fuer Angewandte Kunst, 2000) (exh.
cat.), 170.
Marta Boscolo Marchi, ‘The Wondrous Collection of Prince Henry of Bourbon. From His Journey toJapan to the Opening of the Museum of Oriental Art in Venice’, in The Tradition of Edo Creativity. The
Skill and Soul of Craftsmen Give Birth to Japanese Beauty, edited by Ochiai Noriko, Tanaka Yūji and
Sugiyama Satoshi (Tokyo: Edo Tokyo Museum, 2020) (exh. cat.), 188–195.
Heinz Spielmann, Justus Brinckmann (Hamburg: Ellert & Richter, 2002).
Gabriel P. Weisberg, L’Art Nouveau: la maison Bing (Amsterdam: Belser, 2004) (exh. cat.); S. Bing,
Le japon artistique (Paris: Japon Artistique and Marpon et Flammarion, 1888–1891), https://gallica.
bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb344285339/date1888.liste; S. Bing, Japanischer Formenschatz (Leipzig: Seemann,
1888–1891).
Wibke Schrape, Among Friends. Japanese Tea Ceramics (Hamburg: Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe
Hamburg, 2020), https://zenodo.org/record/3991828#.YzF3_YTP2Ul.
Hayashi Tadamasa (ed.), Histoire de l’art du Japon (Paris: Maurice de Brunhoff, 1900), https://digital.
staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/werkansicht/?PPN=PPN780041135.
Collection Hayashi: Objets d’art du Japon et de la Chine: peintures, livres réunis par T. Hayashi … dont lavente … du lundi 27 janvier au samedi 1er février 1902 inclus dans les Galeries de MM. Durand-Ruel …
Paris (Paris: S. Bing, 1902) (Auction cat.). Collection Hayashi: Objets d’art et peintures de la Chine et duJapon réunis par T. Hayashi … deuxième partie dont la vente … du lundi 16 février au samedi 21 février
1903 inclus à l’Hôtel Drouot, Paris (Paris: S. Bing, 1901-1903) (Auction cat.). Collection Hayashi: Dessins,
estampes, livres illustrés du Japon réunis par T. Hayashi … dont la vente … du lundi 2 juin au vendredi
6 juin 1902 inclus à l’Hôtel Drouot, Paris (Paris: S. Bing, 1902) (Auction cat.); Committee of Hayashi
Tadamasa Symposium (Ed.): Hayashi Tadamasa – Japonisme and Cultural Exchanges (Tokyo: Hatsubaimoto Seiunsha, 2007). Yasuko Kigi in Correspondance addressée à Hayashi Tadamasa, ed. Brigitte
Koyama-Richard (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankokai, 2001).
Catalog de la collection des gardes de sabres japonaises au Musée du Louvre. Don de Tadamasa Hayashi
de Tokyo (Paris: Hayashi, 1894) (exh. cat.).
Shinkichi Hara, Die Meister der japanischen Schwertzierathen: Ueberblick ihrer Geschichte, Verzeichnis
der Meister mit Daten ueber ihr Leben und mit ihren Namen in der Urschrift (Hamburg: Gräfe & Sillem,1902), https://www.zobodat.at/pdf/Jb-Hamburg-Wissenschaft-Anstalten_19_BH_I-XLIII.pdf.
Hara, Die Meister der japanischen Schwertzierathen. My translation.
Ruth Negendanck, Die Galerie Ernst Arnold (1893–1951): Kunsthandel und Zeitgeschichte (Weimar:
VDG, 1998).
Ernst Arnold (ed.), Ausstellung Japanischer Holzschnitte 17. – 19. Jahrhundert: Ausstellung im Kunstsalon von Ernst Arnold (Dresden: n.p., 1895).
Werke Hokusai’s ausgestellt im K.K.Öst. Museum für Kunst u. Industrie Wien (Vienna: Hirschler, 1901)(exh. cat.).
Hartmut Walravens, Und der Sumeru meines Dankes wuerde wachsen. Beitraege zur ostasiatischen Kunstgeschichte in Deutschland (1896–1932): Briefe des Ethnologen und Kunstwissenschaftlers Ernst Große anseinen Freund und Kollegen Otto Kuemmel sowie Briefwechsel zwischen dem Kunsthistoriker Gustav Eckeund dem Architekten Ernst Boerschmann (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010).
Ernst Diez and Melanie Siassny, eds., Katalog der Ausstellung ostasiatischer Kunst im Oesterreichischen
Museum fuer Kunst und Industrie April-Juni 1922 (Vienna: Rikola, 1922) (exhib. cat.).
On this topic, see Masako Nohara Racel, ‘Finding their Place in the World: Meiji Intellectuals and theJapanese Construction of an East-West Binary 1868–1912’ (PhD diss., Georgia State University, 2011),
https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1025&context=history_diss.

Johannes Wieninger

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alcock, Rutherford. The Capital of the Tycoon: A Narrative of a Three Years’ Residence in Japan. 2 vols. London:
Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1863.
Arnold, Ernst, ed. Ausstellung Japanischer Holzschnitte 17. – 19. Jahrhundert: Ausstellung im Kunstsalon vonErnst Arnold. Dresden: n.p., 1895. Exhibition catalogue.
Arts of East and West from World Expositions: 1855–1900. Paris, Vienna, Chicago. Tokyo: Tokyo National
Museum, 2004. Exhibition catalogue.
Bing, S. Le japon artistique: Documents d’Art et d’Industrie. Paris: Japon Artistique and Marpon et Flammarion,
1888–1891. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb344285339/date1888.liste.
Bing, S. Japanischer Formenschatz. Leipzig: Seemann, 1888–1891.
Boscolo Marchi, Marta. ‘The Wondrous Collection of Prince Henry of Bourbon: From His Journey to Japan to
the Opening of the Museum of Oriental Art in Venice’. In The Tradition of Edo Creativity: The Skill andSoul of Craftsmen Give Birth to Japanese Beauty, edited by Ochiai Noriko, Tanaka Yūji and Sugiyama
Satoshi, 174–203. Tokyo: Edo Tokyo Museum, 2020. Exhibition catalogue.
Catalog de la collection des gardes de sabres japonaises au Musée du Louvre. Don de Tadamasa Hayashi de Tokyo.
Paris: Hayashi, 1894. Exhibition catalogue.
Catalog der kaiserlich japanischen Ausstellung. Vienna: Japanischen Ausstellungs-Commission, 1873. Exhibition catalogue. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044005279583&seq=5.
Collection Hayashi: Objets d’art du Japon et de la Chine: peintures, livres réunis par T. Hayashi … dont la vente… du lundi 27 janvier au samedi 1er février 1902 inclus dans les Galeries de MM. Durand-Ruel … Paris.
Paris: S. Bing, 1902. Auction catalogue. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6580406g?rk=42918;4
Collection Hayashi: Objets d’art et peintures de la Chine et du Japon réunis par T. Hayashi … deuxième partie
dont la vente … du lundi 16 février au samedi 21 février 1903 inclus à l’Hôtel Drouot, Paris. Paris: S. Bing,
1901-1903. Auction catalogue. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6580824s/f451.item.r=vente%20
hayashi.langDE
Collection Hayashi: Dessins, estampes, livres illustrés du Japon réunis par T. Hayashi … dont la vente … du lundi
2 juin au vendredi 6 juin 1902 inclus à l’Hôtel Drouot, Paris. Paris: S. Bing, 1902. Auction catalogue.
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k886926z/f5.item
Committee of Hayashi Tadamasa Symposium (ed.): Hayashi Tadamasa – Japonisme and Cultural Exchanges.
Tokyo: Hatsubaimoto Seiunsha, 2007.
Croissant, Doris. Japanese Paintings in the Linden-Museum Stuttgart: A Selection from the Baelz Collection, 2
vols. Stuttgart and Tokyo: Linden-Museum and Kodansha, 1991.
Diez, Ernst, and Melanie Stiassny, eds. Katalog der Ausstellung ostasiatischer Kunst im Oesterreichischen Museum
für Kunst und Industrie April–Juni 1922. Vienna: Rikola, 1922. Exhibition catalogue. https://archive.org/
details/bub_gb_ZmpBAAAAYAAJ/page/n1/mode/2up
Fux, Herbert. Japan auf der Weltausstellung in Wien 1873. Vienna: Museum of Applied Arts, 1973. Exhibition
catalogue.
Girmond, Sybille. ‘Die Rezeption Japans. Die “Internationale Ausstellung von Arbeiten aus edlen Metallen undLegirungen” in Nuernberg 1885. Teil I Metallarbeiten’. Ostasiatische Zeitschrift 6 (2003): 32–48.
Gmelin, Leopold. ‘Internationale Ausstellung von Arbeiten aus edlen Metallen und Legierungen in Nürnberg 1885’. Zeitschrift des Kunst-Gewerbe-Vereins zu München 11/12 (1885): 90–100. https://doi.
org/10.11588/diglit.7029.33.
Hara, Shinkichi. Die Meister der japanischen Schwertzierathen: Ueberblick ihrer Geschichte, Verzeichnis der
Meister mit Daten ueber ihr Leben und mit ihren Namen in der Urschrift. Hamburg: Gräfe & Sillem, 1902.
https://www.zobodat.at/pdf/Jb-Hamburg-Wissenschaft-Anstalten_19_BH_I-XLIII.pdf.
Hayashi, Tadamasa, ed. Histoire de l’art du Japon. Paris: Maurice de Brunhoff, 1900. https://digital.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/werkansicht/?PPN=PPN780041135.
Hidaka, Kaori, and Bettina Zorn. Japan zur Meiji-Zeit: die Sammlung Heinrich von Siebold. Vienna: KMH-Museumsverband, 2020. Exhibition catalogue.
Hidaka, Kaori, and Bettina Zorn, eds. Transmitters of Another Culture II: The Collection of Heinrich von Siebold.
Kyoto: Rinsen Shoton, 2021.
Internationale Ausstellung von Arbeiten aus edlen Metallen und Legirungen in Nürnberg 1885. Offizieller Katalog: Herausgegeben vom Bayrischen Gewerbemuseum in Nürnberg. Nuremburg: Verlagsanstalt desBayr. Gewerbemuseums, 1885. Exhibition catalogue. https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/
bsb00010446?page=,1.
Koyama-Richard, Brigitte, ed. Correspondance addressée à Hayashi Tadamasa. Tokyo: Kokusho Kankokai, 2001.
Kreiner, Josef, ed. 200 years of Siebold: The Japanese Collections of Philipp Franz and Heinrich von Siebold. Tokyo:
Edo Tokyo Museum, 1996. Exhibition catalogue.

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Negendanck, Ruth. Die Galerie Ernst Arnold (1893–1951): Kunsthandel und Zeitgeschichte. Weimar: VDG,
1998.
Noever, Peter, Johannes Wieninger, and Bettina Zorn, eds. Das alte Japan: Spuren und Objekte der Siebold-Reisen. Munich: Prestel, 1997. Exhibition catalogue.
Noever, Peter, ed. Kunst und Industrie: die Anfaenge des Museums fuer Angewandte Kunst in Wien. Ostfildern:
Hatje Cantz, 2000. Exhibition catalogue.
Nohara Racel, Masako. ‘Finding their Place in the World: Meiji Intellectuals and the Japanese Construction of
Aan East-West Binary 1868–1912’. Phd diss., Georgia State University, 2011. https://scholarworks.gsu.
edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1025&context=history_diss.
Noriko, Ochiai, Tanaka Yūji and Sugiyama Satoshi, The Tradition of Edo Creativity: The Skill and Soul of Craftsmen Give Birth to Japanese Beauty. Tokyo: Edo Tokyo Museum, 2020. Exhibition catalogue.
Sano, Kentaro, ‘Japan and the 1867 Paris Exposition’. TJJ online, 9 March 2018. https://www.japanjournal.jp/
society/pt20180309170702.html.
Schrape, Wibke, Jan Kollwitz and Christoph Peters. Among Friends. Japanese Tea Ceramics. Hamburg: Museum
für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, 2020. Exhibition catalogue. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3991828.
Spielmann, Heinz. Justus Brinckmann. Hamburg: Ellert & Richter, 2002.
Walravens, Hartmut. ‘Und der Sumeru meines Dankes wuerde wachsen’. Beitraege zur ostasiatischen Kunstgeschichte in Deutschland (1896–1932): Briefe des Ethnologen und Kunstwissenschaftlers Ernst Große anseinen Freund und Kollegen Otto Kuemmel sowie Briefwechsel zwischen dem Kunsthistoriker Gustav Eckeund dem Architekten Ernst Boerschmann. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010.
Walter-Ris, Anja. ‘Der moderne Kunsthandel an Spree und Rhein von 1850–1918’.
In Kunstleidenschaft im Dienst der Moderne. Die Geschichte der Galerie Nierendorf, Berlin/New York, 1920–1995,
edited by Anja Walter-Ris, 21–52. Zurich: Interpublishers, 2003.
Weisberg, Gabriel P. L’Art Nouveau: la maison Bing. Stuttgart: Belser, 2004–2006. Exhibition catalogue.
Werke Hokusai’s ausgestellt im K.K.Öst. Museum für Kunst u. Industrie Wien (Vienna: Hirschler, 1901).
Wieninger, Johannes. ‘Er brachte viel Eigenartiges und Notwendiges mit: Arthur von Scala als Mittler zwischen
Ost und West und die Grundlegung der Asiensammlung des heutigen Museums fuer angewandte Kunst
1868–1909’. In Kunst und Industrie: die Anfaenge des Museums fuer Angewandte Kunst in Wien, editedby Peter Noever, 164–172. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2000. Exhibition catalogue.

110

Johannes Wieninger

SPOTLIGHT ON(COMMUNIST) ASIA

WHEN EAST AND WEST MET IN THE HEART
OF EUROPE: VOJTĚCH CHYTIL AND HISCONTRIBUTION TO COLLECTING ASIAN ART
IN CENTRAL EUROPE*
Michaela Pejčochová

INTRODUCTION
As part of the inquiry into the history of the Asian Art Collection at the National
Gallery in Prague (NGP), which in 2021 celebrated seventy years since its founding, it is important to delve deeper into the processes that enabled some of the
Asian artworks to reach Europe and become part of the public collections. The
collection of these artworks was made possible by institutional conditions andcontexts as well as exceptional individuals, who played important roles in getting
hold of works of art from Asia. The purpose of this paper is to introduce one ofthese collectors, who is a towering figure in the collecting history of Chinese,
Tibetan, and Japanese art in Central Europe in the 1920s and 1930s: Vojtěch
Chytil (1896–1936). Chytil brought several hundred paintings by Qi Baishi(1864–1957), one of the most important modern Chinese painters, to former
Czechoslovakia, together with dozens of paintings by other famous masters active
in northern China, such as Chen Nian (1876–1970), Xiao Sun (1883–1944), andJin Cheng (1878–1926), as well as works by some little-known painters, who aretoday pretty obscure both in China and Europe. Besides that, Chytil also collected
Chinese Buddhist sculpture and decorative arts, as well as Tibetan art and Japanese woodblock prints.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Chytil organised around twenty selling exhibitions in
the cultural centres of Central Europe, such as Prague, Brno, Bratislava, Vienna,
Budapest, and Berlin – but even as far as London – and sold hundreds of theabove-mentioned artworks to his contemporaries. In this way, the objects heamassed in the Far East became part of the Asian art collections in a number ofplaces around Central Europe. After Chytil’s sudden death in 1936, his collection
When East and West met in the Heart of Europe

113was inherited by his wife, Nina, and later the NGP was fortunate to receive apart of her estate when Nina died in 1981. In this way, many of the artworks that
Chytil valued most and wasn’t willing to sell during his lifetime entered the NGP’s
collection.
This article will elaborate on Chytil’s career, his art collection, the exhibitions
he held in Europe, and the lasting legacy of his activities for collecting Chinese
art in the Central Europe. It will also highlight works of some lesser-known Beijing-based painters preserved in the NGP and other collections that are unique inthe global context today and document modernist experiments and other painting styles of creators now forgotten even in China.

THE COLLECTORVojtěch Chytil was born in 1896 into a poor family settled in the north-eastern part of today’s Czech Republic.1 He is said to have excelled in drawing andpainting early in his youth, so upon the recommendation of a secondary school
teacher, he enrolled at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts in 1912. There he studied
what was called the General Course between 1912 and 1915. In the meantime, theFirst World War broke out in Europe, and most young men had to join the troopsof the Austro-Hungarian army. Little information survives concerning Chytil’s
experiences during WWI. But different sources suggest that he deserted the army
somewhere in today’s Russia, travelled on his own through a large part of Siberia
and subsequently on to Japan and Shanghai. Finally, sometime in spring 1918,
he settled down in the town of Hankou (today’s city of Wuhan) in central China.
There he joined the large community of Westerners, which had established itself
in the area more than half a century before, some of them dealing in raw materials
or in tea. Chytil painted for wealthy Russian patrons; studied Chinese language,
history, and culture; and travelled around central China.
He was also teaching painting: his class reportedly comprised eleven students,
recruited mostly from the circles of his friends and acquaintances. Towards theend of 1918, he took part in a three-day exhibition in Shanghai, where he sold
most of his paintings on display.2 Having thus earned a substantial amount ofmoney, he could afford to move to Beijing in spring 1919. In the same way as
many other foreigners, he liked to paint in the Forbidden City and depict thesightseeing spots of Beijing. Chytil mentions that he completed more than fifty
oil paintings, watercolours, and crayon drawings for an exhibition in 1919, after
which he travelled back to Czechoslovakia.3
Chytil returned to Czechoslovakia in early 1920 and resumed his studies at
the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, from which he graduated in mid-1921. Backhome, he experienced what he liked to describe as ‘the call of the East’, so heapplied to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a position in the diplomatic service
in the Far East. His request was granted, and in August 1921, he was sent as a114Michaela PejčochováFigure 1. Vojtěch Chytil (second from the left) with students from the Beijing Academy of Arts in front of
the Meridian Gate in Beijing. 1925–1927. Collection of the author.

legation clerk to Tokyo. In October he was relocated to the newly establishedCzechoslovak consulate in Beijing, and so began Chytil’s second long period ofstay in China, which lasted until summer 1927.4
Although busy with official responsibilities, Chytil soon resumed his diplomatic contacts in Beijing and reconnected with art circles; he was also able tofind time to paint and sell more of his paintings. At the same time, he was hiredby the Beijing Academy of Arts, where he taught between 1922 and 1927 (fig. 1).
Chytil’s abilities as a teacher and his personal charisma supposedly won him
fame and popularity among students and other teachers. His pupil Li Jianchen(1900–2002), who later became a well-known watercolour painter, recalls in his
memoirs that Chytil’s paintings were mainly admired for his subtle use of colours,with which he was able to create a remarkable atmosphere close to that in original
Chinese paintings. Only a handful of Chytil’s own works, which could document
his painting style and favourite subjects, survive to this day.
Chytil took part in a number of artistic activities in China, displaying his oil
paintings and watercolours, for example, in the spring venue of the 1924 InterWhen East and West met in the Heart of Europe

115

national Exhibition of Fine Arts (Wanguo meishu zhanlanhui chunji dahui) in
Shanghai, where paintings, sculptures, and other objects by leading foreign andChinese artists were shown. In spring 1925 Chytil left the services of the Czecho­slovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs to live in Beijing as a private person. This
allowed him to devote his energies entirely to teaching, painting, and collecting.
In March of that year, he married a woman of Russian origin settled in Beijing,
Nina Mihailovna Kokorin (1899–1981). It was Nina, in the end, who became
instrumental in preserving his collection intact after Chytil’s premature death,and she eventually bequeathed it to the NGP in the early 1980s.
Besides teaching and exhibiting his own paintings, Chytil initiated the founding of the Art Splendour Society (Yiguang she) in Beijing in 1926 and recruitedmembers from the student body. The proclaimed aim of the association was thestudy of Western art techniques, particularly the research of watercolour techniques. Its activities also included sketching nude models, which caused sucha stir in conservative Beijing that purportedly even the police had to be calledto calm down the situation. Chytil was summoned for an explanation and, tohelp the public understand the activities of the young painters better, allegedly
decided to organise a large exhibition that would introduce the works of the Art
Splendour Society to contemporaries. The exhibition, held under the auspices ofthe premier’s wife, Huang Huilan, and the Deputy Minister of Education, Chen
Renzhong, opened on 23 June 1926 in the Sun Yat-sen Pavilion in Central Parkin Beijing. It was very successful, and most of the works sold in a few days.5 In
December 1926 Chytil also took part in the Exhibition of Peking Artists in the
Beijing Hotel and displayed thirteen paintings, some of which depicted architectural subjects, portraits, and flowers. Afterwards, he continued to teach Western
painting at the Beijing Academy of Arts, from which he retired in summer 1927
to pursue his plans to collect and exhibit Asian art in Europe.
By establishing himself in the art circles in northern China in the 1920s, Chytil
had the opportunity not only to sell his own paintings but also to see and acquire
paintings by Chinese painters active there at the time. During his sojourns in Beijing, Chytil made numerous profitable contacts and acquaintances, which enabled
him to acquire works for his European shows, organised between 1927 and 1936.

CHYTIL’S CHINESE ACQUAINTANCESThe Beijing Academy of Arts, where Vojtěch Chytil taught Western painting, was
one of the main art training institutions in China at that time, and many prominent painters were thus connected with it.6 Among them was Qi Baishi, who lectured on the techniques of traditional Chinese ink painting and had just started
to become famous in China, as well as in Japan. Chytil became one of his earlyclients and supporters, and gradually, he became completely enamoured with Qi
Baishi’s art. Two other Beijing-based painters who were close to Chytil at this116Michaela PejčochováFigure 2. Guanyin by Xiao Songren. 1925. Ink and colours on paper,
280 × 100 cm. Originally in Vojtěch Chytil’s collection, now National
Gallery in Prague, inv. no. Vm 5708. (See plate 15, p. 252)

time were Chen Banding and Xiao Sun. Anothernoteworthy painter was Jin Cheng, who was,among other activities, responsible for negotiating
and organising the joint Sino-Japanese exhibitions,which helped Qi Baishi and other artists gain popularity in Japan in the early 1920s.7
Besides these artists, who are today recognised
as the movers and shakers of the Beijing art scene
in the 1920s and 1930s, there was a number ofpainters who are all but forgotten today. Thanks tothe collecting interests of Vojtěch Chytil, however,their artworks are preserved to this day in European collections. One of these emerging artists was
Xiao Songren (1907?–?), whose ten paintings aretoday preserved in the collection of the NGP. Chytil
praised him as the leader of a large group of young
painters from the Beijing Academy of Arts and as abrave personality of good standing in his time, but
curiously enough, hardly any trace of his life andwork can be found today. Not even his dates of birth and death are certain. All weknow is that he styled himself as S. J. Hsiao in the texts published about him in
English and that he also used the pseudonym One-Eyed Pilgrim (Yi yan xing zhe)as part of his signatures on preserved paintings. He seems to have been born inhumble conditions in Tianjin, but he left for Beijing during his teenage years andstarted to study at the Beijing Academy of Arts, where he met Qi Baishi, Vojtěch
Chytil, and other teachers who helped him cultivate his indisputable painting
talent. Besides the guidance of his teachers, Xiao Songren was obviously inspiredby Western modernist styles, and there are some indications that he also pursued
his interest in Buddhism and other systems of thought, which influenced his own
artistic creations (fig. 2).8
Another interesting aspect of the Beijing art scene in the interwar period isthat a considerable number of women artists were involved; according to the preserved testimonies, they started to enjoy a status similar to the one of their malecounterparts, which in itself was huge progress from the traditional order.9 Oneof these young women artists was the painter Luo Baoshen (dates unknown), who
specialised in the genre of flowers and birds. Few details of her life and career
survive, and only a handful of her paintings are documented in the period press
and catalogues. According to the preserved sources, her father, Luo Shouping
When East and West met in the Heart of Europe

117

Figure 3. Hortensia by Luo Baoshen. 1931.
Ink and colours on silk, 33.5 × 44.5 cm.
Originally in Vojtěch Chytil’s collection,
later in Vladimír Richter’s collection, now
National Gallery in Prague, inv. no. Vm 6710.
(See plate 16, p. 253)

Figure 4. Landscape by Shao Xilian. 1928. Ink and colours on paper,89 × 39.2 cm. Originally in Vojtěch Chytil’s collection, now National
Gallery in Prague, inv. no. Vm 5723. (See plate 17, p. 254)

(dates unknown), was a physician, and Baoshen
was among the first graduates of the Beijing Academy of Arts. She painted using Chinese as well as
Western techniques, and she focused chiefly on
painting flowers using the meticulous ‘laborious
brush’ technique, in which the contours of objects
are delineated in ink outlines, which are afterwards
filled in with colours. It is said she collected over
two hundred types of flowers growing in Beijing
and the surrounding area, and she created a painting manual using them. She was involved in several
artistic societies, such as the Beiping Art Society(Beiping yishe), and some sources point to her
activities in the Southern Field Painting Society(Nantian huashe). This group of painters studied the style of famous Qing dynasty
painter Yun Shouping (1633–1690) and copied some of his brightly coloured
flower compositions, which had been a style preferred by female painters in traditional China. A painting of goldfish under a magnolia twig by Luo Baoshen
is reproduced in the period press,10 which is very similar to another picture byfemale painter Sun Kewu. Both were obviously modelled after a now lost painting
by Yun Shouping, which the women copied as part of their practice. Anotherpainting by Luo Baoshen, rarely preserved in a European collection, is Hortensia,
painted in 1931 and exhibited as part of Chytil’s European presentations of modern Chinese painting (fig. 3).
Vojtěch Chytil taught at the Beijing Academy of Arts until 1927 and reputedly
devoted enormous energy to promoting the works of his young students. Besides,
118

Michaela Pejčochováhe was also captivated by painting styles of some of his fellow teachers at the
Beijing Academy. Among them was Shao Xilian (1888–1954), a master almost
forgotten today, whom Chytil met as a teacher of Chinese ink painting at thisinstitution. Reportedly a leader of a huge group of painters who strove to revive
Chinese ink painting from indigenous sources, without resorting to borrowing
elements from Western art, Shao created dozens of landscapes that were partof Chytil’s exhibitions in Europe. Four landscapes, mostly in the archaic blueand-green style, where mountain slopes are coloured with azurite and malachite(fig. 4), and one painting of shrimps by Shao are today preserved in the NGP’s
collection. Another of his landscapes is part of the collection of the Ferenc Hopp
Museum of Asian Art in Budapest, which received it as a gift from Chytil after his
exhibition there in 1930.

EXHIBITIONS OF CHYTIL’S COLLECTION OF ASIAN ART ORGANISED IN
CENTRAL EUROPE
Between 1927 and 1936, Chytil organised around twenty exhibitions of modern
Chinese painting and other Asian artworks in European cultural centres, anda few more were put together by his wife and friends after his death in 1936.11
Most of these exhibitions offered artworks for sale and a massive interest in themthroughout the decade of Chytil’s activity resulted in the fact that dozens or even
hundreds of Asian artworks got into private and public collections around Central Europe. The most remarkable part of these were modern Chinese paintings,
which had not been sought after as a collecting article in Europe before, butVojtěch Chytil did his best to promote them among his contemporaries.
The first show, entitled simply Chinese Art, took place in Prague in January andFebruary 1928. Two of Chytil’s Chinese students, Wang Meng (1901–1987) and
Sun Kewu (1904–1931), were the two most extensively represented Chinese painters here. They had originally arrived in Prague in 1926 and enrolled at the Prague
Academy of Fine Arts to study in the studio of Czech painter Max Švabinský (1873–
1962). During their three years in Prague, however, they also created a number ofChinese ink paintings, which they sold at exhibitions to earn a living. It appears thatwhen Vojtěch Chytil decided to start exhibiting his collection in Prague, he wanted
to test the possibilities of showing modern Chinese painting in Europe first anddecided to build his first exhibition around the works of Wang and Sun. According
to the preserved reports and reviews in contemporary press, this strategy worked
very well, and Chinese painting was met with a warm welcome from both visitorsand critics. Chytil, thus encouraged and convinced about the plausibility of his
undertakings, moved on with the preparations of larger exhibitions.
A more comprehensive selection of works by Beijing masters was displayed at
the second Prague exhibition organised in spring 1929. The catalogue published
for this show contains a preface where Chytil describes the latest development in
When East and West met in the Heart of Europe

119Figure 5. Fisherman by Qi Baishi. Ink and colours on paper, 141.5 ×
49 cm. Originally in Vojtěch Chytil’s collection, now National Gallery
in Prague, inv. no. Vm 1446. (See plate 18, p. 255)

the field of Chinese painting and expounds on thequalities of painters who have brought about revolutionary changes in this discipline.12 An archival
document records Chytil’s statement that he hadplanned to present works by Qi Baishi at this exhibition, but due to a delay caused by the shipping
company, the paintings arrived in Europe too late
and were shown only at the next venue, in Vienna
in spring 1930.13 Thus, it is here that the paintingsby Qi Baishi, Chen Banding, Xiao Sun, and othermajor modern ink painters from northern China
were presented in Europe for the first time. The
exhibition took place in the building of the Wiener
Secession in Vienna and was inaugurated under
the auspices of the Chinese ambassador in Austria,
Dekien Toung (Chin. Tong Deqian 1887–1944?). It
was reported as a sensation and received the attention of not only art circles but also the Austrian
nobility and political representatives of the day.
Chytil was greatly encouraged by this success and returned repeatedly to
China to acquire new paintings for his upcoming shows. In 1930 three more exhibitions were staged in Brno, Berlin, and Budapest. They all had a fairly similar
structure, typically composed of three major parts. One part was usually devoted
to modern Chinese painting, represented mostly by the above-mentioned masters and their pupils. These were complemented with a few paintings by paintersfrom other areas or schools, such as Wu Changshi (1844–1927), whom Chytil
admired and whom he regarded as a predecessor of Qi Baishi. The second partpresented Tibetan painting and sculpture, which Chytil collected passionately asa private delight. The last part focused on Japanese woodblock prints, together
with a few paintings by Japanese masters of the day.
In late 1930 and early 1931, Chytil was planning another extensive show in
Prague and was determined to secure the best paintings by Qi Baishi and otherBeijing artists available at the time. In the end, a number of Qi’s masterpieces
were shown: a rare album of plants and insects painted on silk, the famous Fisherman (fig. 5), and the Lake in the Wind, which Chytil allegedly bought from a
private collection. In 1932 and 1933 Chytil’s collection was repeatedly exhibitedin Czechoslovakia. At least four shows are documented to have been organized in120Michaela Pejčochovádifferent local cultural centres, such as Pilsen, Olomouc, Pardubice, and Ostrava.
In summer 1933 and 1934, Chytil held two shows in London, which were uniquein that they did not offer the exhibited works for sale.14 These shows were thefirst to present modern Chinese painting to the British public and were widely
covered by the press. Art critics of renown, such as the British Museum Keeper of
the Chinese collection Laurence Binyon (1869–1943), praised the qualities of theChinese paintings in Chytil’s collection.15
After the artworks returned from London in 1934, Chytil decided to expand
his commercial activities towards a broader spectrum of objects, and he also
wanted to engage in politics, which met with little success. Nevertheless, he wasstill investing lots of energy into popularising Chinese art in Europe and staged
another large-scale exhibition in the Slovak capital of Bratislava in summer 1935.
The following year, in spring 1936, Chytil was again preparing a grandiose show
in Vienna. As usual, several dozen paintings by Qi Baishi, Chen Nian, Xiao Sun,and Jin Cheng were shown, side by side with works by lesser-known artists, suchas Hu Peiheng (1892–1965), Luo Baoshen, Shao Xilian, Xiao Songren, and others. This time, the exhibition also featured an array of Chinese applied arts, suchas fragments of old wall paintings, earthenware and porcelain figures, wooden
statues, and lacquer objects.16 Tibetan art was again displayed side by side with
Chinese works. This show, the last exhibition Chytil managed to put together
himself, thus represented the scope of his collection attained by the mid-1930s,
after some fifteen years of fervent activity.
During the preparations for the Vienna exhibition, however, Chytil suffereda recurrence of typhus, which he had contracted during his days of wartime captivity in Ukraine, and which resulted in incapacitation. He collapsed and died afew days afterwards, at the age of forty. After his death, three more exhibitions of
his collection were organised in Czechoslovakia and Hungary by his wife Nina
and close friends. Thereafter, unfortunately, the Second World War began tothreaten Europe, which severely affected activities related to the collecting andexchange of artworks for more than five years. After the end of the WWII, Nina
kept the family collection for more than thirty years and occasionally lent a few
works to an exhibition; she also sold some of them to the NGP. Upon her death in
1981, she bequeathed the artworks from Chytil’s collection to this institution, andthey became an important part of the holdings of the Collection of Asian Art. In
addition, a large number of the objects displayed at Chytil’s exhibitions had beensold in the 1920s and 1930s and had ended up in the collections of European
businesspeople, politicians, and lovers of art. Many of these private collections
were unfortunately dispersed during the war and again during the Communist
takeover in Czechoslovakia and other countries of the socialist bloc after 1948. In
spite of this, numerous works can still be found among the family holdings of theheirs of the collectors who had originally bought them from Chytil’s exhibitions,surfacing now and then in auctions or offers to the National Gallery in Prague.

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121CONCLUSION
Chytil’s activities established a basis for the subsequent collection and exhibitionof Chinese art, most notably modern Chinese painting, around Central Europe.
An analysis of the contents of these exhibitions shows that during his exhibiting and commercial career, Vojtěch Chytil mainly concentrated on promoting
the work of modern Chinese painters active at the Beijing Academy of Arts. In
his texts, nonetheless, although he tried to position these painters in a pseudo
art historical context, Chytil never ventured beyond this group of painters from
northern China to learn what was happening in the art scene elsewhere in China.
He never mentioned, for example, Lin Fengmian (1900–1991), who was Chytil’s
superior at the Beijing Academy of Arts before moving on to Hangzhou to starthis own art academy there; he even opened one of the most important exhibitionsof works by Chytil’s pupils in 1926. In his own painting, however, Lin Fengmian
was inspired by European modernist masters and broke away from the conventions of traditional Chinese ink painting, which might have been the cause of
Chytil’s refusal to collect his artworks.
Chytil also never explored the role of Liu Haisu (1896–1994) or Xu Beihong(1895–1953), who both organised other shows of modern Chinese painting that
toured around Europe side by side with those put together by Chytil. Curiously,
for example, Chytil mounted a huge and successful show in Berlin in 1930,
but never realised that Liu Haisu was present there at roughly the same time,
preparing for his 1931 exhibition Ausstellung Chinesischer Maler der Jetztzeit.17
Most interestingly, Chytil never mentioned some other important Beijing masters active outside the Beijing Academy of Arts, even though he must have comeacross their paintings. For instance, he bought the painting Tao Yuanming and
His Poem Return to the Fields by Pu Ru (1896–1963), which is now regarded as
one of Pu’s most precious works in European collections, but Chytil explained
neither his background nor his importance in the catalogue of the 1931 show in
Vienna where the work was first displayed. He merely included a detail of Pu Ru’s
beautifully painted figure of the poet Tao Yuanming on the cover of the volume,
keeping silent about its author in his essay on the development of modern Chinese painting, which served as the catalogue’s introduction.
It therefore seems that Chytil was basically exhibiting works of his colleagues
and students from the Beijing Academy of Arts, together with a few of his otherfavourite painters, and promoting them vigorously as masters responsible for therevival of Chinese ink painting. Even though Chytil was an active and enthusiastic collector and teacher of painting, he did not have any true strategy or concept,
nor a specialised training that would give him a more profound insight into theworkings of the larger art scene in China. His shows received positive responses
in Europe and stirred a huge wave of interest in modern Chinese painting, but theartworks were admired mostly for their aesthetic qualities and partly as examples
of a certain exoticism.
122Michaela PejčochováAt the time, media hardly published any critical responses to Chytil’s presentations, which is in striking contrast to his experience in the United States. In theearly 1930s, drunk on his success with the European public, Chytil was looking forpossibilities to show his collection in the United States, which he crossed several
times during his trips from Asia to Europe. He sent letters of introduction to Alex
Hrdlička (1869-1943), a countryman active in the Smithsonian Institution, who
promised to help him pass his proposals to the curators of the Freer Gallery of
Art in Washington, DC, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Chytil boasted
the financial success of his exhibitions in Europe and exaggerated his influenceon some of the Chinese government members, who had reputedly promised him
support with bringing to the USA the collections of ancient Chinese art from the
Palace Museum in Beijing:
The sensational success of those exhibitions in Europe inspired me toorganize a large Chinese National Art-exhibition in America, than [thosepresented in] London and Paris. Old and new art showing the developmentfrom the earliest to the latest days. With the help of Chinese Government,
as we need to obtain some of those scrolls from the National Museum of
Peking /Peipin/. And through the Chinese Legation we reported it alreadyto the Nanking Government. […] And indeed, I wish to bring it to UnitedStates first, to the great nation which takes more interest in Young China
than any other country in the world. Up to that time my book about modern China Art will be completed and I expect to read lectures on Chineseand Japanese Arts in United States. […] I have introduced the Idea of theexhibition already in 1927 to the Chinese Government in Peking and as
owing to the troubles at that time it was hard to push it through, so I undertook the task by myself. I paid all the transport-expenses, I have done all thenecessary propaganda. I received 30% from the entrance-tickets to cover
my expenses. And to add that the exhibition is enchanting the visitors thatmuch, that more than 600 pictures have been sold in that old poor Europeof today at 3 cities – Vienna-Berlin-Budapest – it says something! Of course,
only part of the exhibition is for sale! Of course, I do not know how you arearranging such things in United States, and I leave it gladly to the Institution
which will house the show, or which might like to bring it over.18
Obviously, after the huge success of Chytil’s European exhibitions, his hopes werehigh, but he was put off decisively by the response of the curators of the American
museums:the Museum is not interested in modern art primarily because it is modern,nor in ancient art primarily because it is ancient; what really interests us, is
art which is the best in quality of its kind […] [and] all exhibitions given inthis Museum, are open to the public free of charge.19
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The curators in the USA were unimpressed by the emphasis on the financial success of Chytil’s exhibitions, as well as his proclaimed connections in China. The
American museums were more concerned with objective qualities and the comprehensiveness of a presented collection and didn’t dwell on any commercial concerns. From the letter exchange, it is obvious that the exhibiting conventions in
the USA differed considerably from those in Europe, where the private and publicsphere still overlapped significantly. Chytil was thus left to pursue his interestsin the ‘old poor Europe’ alone. Even there, however, contrary to what he himself
declared in many of his texts and talks, none of Chytil’s exhibitions of modern
Chinese painting represented the whole range of achievements of contemporary
Chinese painters. His collection as well as his shows were closely linked to Beijing
art circles and thus document the reception of one part of Chinese modern ink
painting in Europe throughout the 1920s and 1930s. It remains a task for future
research to contextualize these activities within the larger picture of the introduction of modern Chinese art in other parts of the Western world, where modern
paintings from other parts of China were in the spotlight.

NOTES
*
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

7.
8.
9.

10.
11.

124

This article was supported by a NGP’s Grant for the Long-Term Conceptual Development of a Research
Organisation of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.
For details of Chytil’s biography, see Michaela Pejčochová, Emissary from the Far East. Vojtěch Chytil
and the Collecting of Modern Chinese Painting in Interwar Czechoslovakia (Prague: National Gallery in
Prague, 2019).
For a detailed report from this exhibition, see Liu Haisu, ‘Canguan Fazonghui meishu bolanhui jilüe’[Brief Report on My Visit to the Art Exhibition at the French Club], Shibao (19 and 20 January 1919).
Oldřich Král, ‘Vojtech Chytil – A Czech Painter in Beijing’, Orientations XX, no. 8 (1991): 26–32.
For Chytil’s term of service with the Foreign Ministry, see Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in
Prague, Personal Documents, Vojtěch Chytil.
Myriophylle [Li Zhaoshi], ‘Yiguangshe huazhan canguan ji’ [Report on My Visit to the Exhibition of the
Art Splendour Society], Shibao (2 July 1926).
For a concise history of this institution and information about its courses and teachers, see Li Zhonghua, Bilu lanlü xing guomei – 1917–1937 nian Beijing guoli zhuanmen meishu jiaoyu yanjiu [Pioneers
Opening Virgin Lands to Uplift National Art – Research on Specialised Art Education on the National
Level in Beijing in 1917–1937] (Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 2008).
For more on these exhibitions, see Aida Yuen Wong, Parting the Mists: Discovering Japan and the Riseof National-Style Painting in Modern China (Honolulu: Association for Asian Studies and University of
Hawai‘i Press, 2006).
Besides the paintings preserved in the collection of the NGP, see reproductions of Xiao Songren’s works
in the Tianjin journal Beiyang huabao throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Details about student life in Beijing and the fact that Chytil’s male and female students lived and worked
together in a common house, pretty much breaking away from traditional restrictions, are mentioned
in his pupil Li Jianchen’s memoirs: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_50d6b97e010093me.html (accessed
8 February 2022).
Salon XI, 1932, no. 12, 15 December, 14.
For a detailed study of Chytil’s European exhibitions, see Michaela Pejčochová, ‘Vojtěch Chytil and His
European Exhibitions of Chinese art. 20th-century Chinese Painting First Introduced in Europe’, in Qi
Baishi yanjiu di san ji [Research on Qi Baishi. Vol. 3] (Nanning: Guangxi meishu chubanshe, 2015),
1–21.

Michaela Pejčochová

12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.

18.
19.

See the catalogue of the exhibition: 51. výstava Jednoty umělců vytvarných v Praze. Japonské a čínské
umění současné [The 51st Exhibition of the Union of Creative Artists in Prague: Japanese and Chinese
Contemporary Art] (Prague: Union of Creative Artists, 1929) (exh. cat.).
Prague City Archives, Papers of the Mánes Fine Arts Union, item no. 4.1., letter from Vojtěch Chytil to
the Mánes Fine Arts Union dated 15 January 1931.
See the catalogues Contemporary Chinese Art (London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 23 May–22 July 1933)
and Professor Chytil’s Collection of Modern Chinese Art (London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 14 June–
28 July 1934).
Chinese Art in Whitechapel. A Unique Exhibition. Mr. Laurence Binyon on Art Lessons from the Far
East, East London Observer, 22 May 1933.
For the complete contents of this exhibition, see the catalogue Ausstellung alter und neuer Chinesischer
Kunst, Vienna, 16 April–May 1936.
For more on the coincidence that Chytil’s and Liu Haisu’s exhibitions of modern Chinese painting were
held in Europe at the same time, see Michaela Pejčochová, ‘Exhibitions of Chinese Painting in Europe
in the Interwar Period: The Role of Liu Haisu as Artistic Ambassador’, in The Reception of Chinese Art
Across Cultures, ed. Michelle Ying-Ling Huang (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing,2014), 179–199.
Archive of the Smithsonian Institution, letter from Vojtěch Chytil to Alex Hrdlička from 6 December 1930. The author’s original wording is reproduced here without corrections.
Archive of the Smithsonian Institution, letter from John Ellerton Lodge to Vojtěch Chytil from31 December 1930.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
51. výstava Jednoty umělců vytvarných v Praze. Japonské a čínské umění současné [The 51st Exhibition of theUnion of Creative Artists in Prague: Japanese and Chinese Contemporary Art]. Prague: Union of Creative Artists, 1929 (exh. cat.).
Král, Oldřich. ‘Vojtech Chytil: A Czech Painter in Beijing’. Orientations XX, no. 8 (1991): 26–32.
Li Zhonghua. Bilu lanlü xing guomei – 1917–1937 nian Beijing guoli zhuanmen meishu jiaoyu yanjiu [Pioneers
Opening Virgin Lands to Uplift National Art – Research on Specialised Art Education on the National
Level in Beijing in 1917–1937]. Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 2008.
Liu Haisu. ‘Canguan Fazonghui meishu bolanhui jilüe’ [Brief Report on My Visit to the Art Exhibition at the
French Club]. Shibao (19 and 20 January 1919).
Myriophylle [Li Zhaoshi]. ‘Yiguangshe huazhan canguan ji’ [Report on My Visit to the Exhibition of the Art
Splendour Society]. Shibao (2 July 1926).
Pejčochová, Michaela. ‘Exhibitions of Chinese Painting in Europe in the Interwar Period: The Role of Liu Haisu
as Artistic Ambassador’. In The Reception of Chinese Art Across Cultures, edited by Michelle Ying-Ling
Huang, 179–199. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014.
Pejčochová, Michaela. ‘Vojtěch Chytil and His European Exhibitions of Chinese Art. 20th-century Chinese
Painting First Introduced in Europe’. In Qi Baishi yanjiu di san ji [Research on Qi Baishi. Vol. 3]. Nanning: Guangxi meishu chubanshe, 2015: 1–21.
Pejčochová, Michaela. Emissary from the Far East. Vojtěch Chytil and the Collecting of Modern Chinese Painting
in Interwar Czechoslovakia. Prague: National Gallery in Prague, 2019.
Wong, Aida Yuen. Parting the Mists: Discovering Japan and the Rise of National-Style Painting in Modern China.
Honolulu: Association for Asian Studies and University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006.

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BIG PRESENTS MAINTAIN THE FRIENDSHIP:THE GIFT OF THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OFCHINA TO THE STAATLICHE MUSEEN ZU BERLIN(NATIONAL MUSEUMS IN BERLIN), GDR, IN 1959
Uta Rahman-Steinert

There is a proverb in German that reads ‘Small presents maintain the friendship.’In the following, an event will be described that proves that big presents are alsoessential contributions to friendship – in this case, the friendship of two states.
It should be mentioned in advance that the article reflects an interim stageof research. Due to a number of circumstances, I have not yet accessed all thearchives I plan to consult, in particular the Bundesarchiv (Federal Archive) of
the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany). This paper ismainly based on the material I found in the Zentralarchiv (Central Archive) of
the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (National Museums in Berlin).
The emphasis of this research is therefore on the connection of the objects
donated by the People’s Republic of China to the history of the Ostasiatische
Sammlung (East Asian Collection), the museum that was the ultimate addresseeof the gift. The following story is further evidence that national politics andmuseum histories are closely intertwined and that the interests and the policies
of a nation state may determine the fate of museums, at least in the case of state
museums. Such dependencies continue in current museum practices as well. The
decision to move the exhibitions of the Museum für Asiatische Kunst (Asian Art
Museum) and the Ethnologisches Museum (Ethnological Museum) of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin from the periphery of Berlin to the Humboldt Forumin the centre of the city was not least driven by the intention to demonstrate­cosmopolitism. The collections on the Museum Island, which focus primarily on
European art and culture, are intended to be enhanced by the non-European collections to form an overall museum of humankind.
In 1945 Berlin was in ruins, as were most of its museums, among them theMuseum Island and the former building of the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum
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127

of Decorative Arts, today, Gropius Bau). The Ostasiatische Kunstsammlung (East
Asian Art Collection), founded in 1906, has had its exhibition rooms in the former building of the Kunstgewerbemuseum since 1924. The historical museum
buildings were considerably affected by the bombing raids on Berlin in 1943 and1945, causing the Ostasiatische Kunstsammlung to lose five per cent of its holdings. Ninety per cent of its collection had been moved to storage in an anti-aircraft bunker at the zoo before 1943 and was removed after the war by the Soviet
Army’s Trophy Commission to the Soviet Union.1 The rest was kept in securesites outside Berlin. This portion of the collection was evacuated to areas lateroccupied by the Western Allies and was returned to West Berlin. As a result of theSecond World War, not only Berlin but also most of the museum collections weredivided. Due to the removal and division, there were hardly any museum holdings of East Asian art in the whole of Berlin, and virtually none in East Berlin.2
The German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the People’s Republic of China(PRC) were both founded in October 1949 – only six days apart. Both countries
immediately established diplomatic relations and became close allies. Founding a
museum in which the cultural achievements of the Chinese people could be presented, became an important cultural and political task on the agenda of the government of the GDR. This was certainly no easy task, with no notable museum
collections at hand.
Despite this, on 18 August 1951, the Staatliche Kommission für Kunstange­legenheiten (State Commission on Art Affairs) of the Ministry of Culture issued
a letter to the general director of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin proposing
to establish a new East Asian department.3 The National Museum’s director ofadministration stated in his reply on 23 August 1951: ‘There are certainly opportunities to rebuild such a department if we are provided with the appropriate
means to purchase works of art from the East Asian cultural area.’ Rooms are nota problem, he continued, and he made up a tentative staff list.4
Without delay, the mandate was implemented. It became the first topic on theagenda of the Directors’ Conference5 on 24 April 1952.6 To deal with the deficiencies, the director of the Kunstgewerbemuseum agreed to contribute objectsof East Asian provenance. The list he delivered a few days later specified several
hundred objects, mainly porcelains and other ceramics, but also objects of glass,enamel, and bronze. He remarked that most of the items were from the nineteenth
century and of rather limited quality; he did not think the number of items worth
being put on display was large.7 The director of the Ägyptisches Museum (Egyptian Museum) of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin was commissioned to contact apossible research assistant for the department, Käte Finsterbusch (1924–2018),8
who had been located at Leipzig University. Preparations proceeded quickly, anda circular from 2 September 1952 already listed the next steps: newly restored
and renovated rooms became available, three of which, in the south wing of thePergamonmuseum, were designated to the new department. Further measures
were taken to acquire additional works of East Asian art.
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Uta Rahman-Steinert

One of these measures was to hire a specialist to set up the first three rooms.
Bruno Voigt (1912–1988)9 was engaged, initially on the basis of a short-term contract, starting from 1 July 1952. At that time still the director of the museum in
Gotha, Voigt subsequently became the director of the Ostasiatische Sammlung in
1954. He was described as a qualified expert on the subject, ‘who has an almost
complete collection of East Asian antiquities in his house [i.e. the museum in
Gotha].’10 Voigt also brought with him the prospect of additional long-term loans
from the holdings of the museum in Gotha.
Voigt designed a preliminary exhibition concept that, despite its limited scope,
formulated the claim to present representative objects from all historical eras anddynasties. This overview was planned to be housed in the first two rooms, followed by one gallery for the interaction between China and Europe and anothergallery for contemporary woodcuts and objects of arts and crafts from the PRC.
The educational purpose was prioritised in the concept and remained a focus
later on. Voigt also recommended that contemporary but also older art should beacquired in the PRC ‘to ensure a high standard for this department.’11
The next step was to invite museum experts from China. Close cooperationand intensive exchange with colleagues from China were characteristic and an
expression of the trusting relation between the countries. Based on a culturalagreement between the GDR and the P. R. of China in 1954, two persons whose
positions have not yet been identified, Wang Yi and Wang Zhenduo,12 visited the
GDR between January and April 1955. According to the itineraries, they completed an enormous programme during their visit. Their travel itinerary comprised twelve densely written pages. In less than three months, they visited about
twenty towns. In ten of them they examined museum collections to assess dates
and the authenticity of Chinese objects.13 They were accompanied by the aforementioned Finsterbusch, then research assistant at Leipzig University and in
charge of the Ostasiatische Sammlung in Berlin on a part-time basis. Presumably,
the trip had been intended to investigate the collections of the museums (andeven one art dealer) all over the GDR in order to identify potential loans for Berlin. However, no loans were realised. Although no record can be traced so far, it
is conceivable that the quality of the objects did not meet the requirements. There
are also indications that the provincial museums were not enthusiastic about giving away what they considered to be their highlights, a fact that can be gleaned
from some of the accompanying documents.
The year 1955 was important for the relationship between the PRC and the
GDR. Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl travelled to China and brought with him anumber of objects: ten banners of the Yihetuan who led the uprising against theEight Nations Alliance (Boxer War) and three volumes of the Yongle Dadian, aChinese encyclopaedia compiled between 1403 and 1408 that is largely lost today.
The objects had been looted by German troops during the Boxer War between
1899 and 1901 in north China. Their return, in a highly symbolic ceremony, confirmed the close relations between the two countries and the Treaty of Friendship
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129

and Cooperation, which was signed during the visit. With this gesture, the GDR
government distanced itself from the colonial heritage of imperial Germany andpositioned itself as a close ally of the PRC. I am including this digression because
I believe this gesture may have contributed to the positive attitude from the Chinese side, which later led to the decision about the donation.
The development of the Ostasiatische Sammlung was not only driven byfriendly relations with the PRC but also shaped by the competition of the economic and social systems of the time. In West Berlin, as early as 20 December 1952, the East Asian department of the Ethnologisches Museum (EthnologicalMuseum, until 2000: Museum für Völkerkunde) had opened new galleries inDahlem that even included a stage for shadow plays. This, however, did not seemto have been the benchmark for the museum in East Berlin which claimed to
be an art museum, not an anthropological or cultural history museum. It had
moved to newly renovated permanent exhibition spaces in the north wing of thePergamonmuseum which were inaugurated alongside the opening of the show
Contemporary Painting of China – Guohua, on 16 September 195714.
In June of the same year, museum director Voigt underlined in a letter directedto the Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
When it was considered to open the Chinese department here, with theholdings available from the museums of the GDR and from private ownership, the opening of the extraordinarily interesting and valuable East Asiancollection in West Berlin – Museums Dahlem – had not yet taken place […]In the current situation, neither the quantity nor the quality of our objects
are sufficient to come anywhere close to the level in Dahlem.15
According to the archival sources, this statement was obviously based on theprospect of setting up an exhibition of artefacts from the Turfan Collection16 inDahlem. Voigt further argued that he, together with Finsterbusch, had researched
the holdings of all relevant museums in the GDR. Taking into account the fact thatthe most valuable objects were already part of their respective exhibitions, only
porcelains from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries were available for loan to
Berlin. Voigt concluded that loans from the PRC were therefore highly desirable:
For if we really were to receive loans from all epochs, even if only on amodest scale, this material, which is still unknown in Europe, would put us
in a position not only to catch up with the Museum Dahlem as well as otherWest German museums but also to surpass them.17
He proposed negotiating with the PRC government for permanent loans andattached a list of desirable objects that he had already compiled earlier in January.
The list comprised seven categories: ceramics, bronzes, jades and other stones,
wooden works, lacquerware, stone rubbings, paintings, and objects from contem130

Uta Rahman-Steinert

porary art production. The list had a comprehensive character; Voigt had clearly
tried to take into account all significant eras and styles of Chinese art history.
Particular emphasis was placed on the importance of Shang and Zhou bronzes
as well as on ceramics from Neolithic periods and burial objects from the Han,
Wei, and Tang dynasties. The proposals for bronzes, for instance, listed one toseven pieces for each of the eight historical periods Voigt quoted, among thembronzes of the ding, gu, hu, you, and jue type from the Shang period (1550–1050
bce, dating in the source) or bronzes with figurative motifs as well as mirrors
from the Tang dynasty (618–907). The most extensive list concerned ceramics,
which proposed a maximum of eighty-seven pieces from all periods. The entry
on the topic ‘Painting’ reveals an interesting detail. Voigt was aware that delicate
Chinese paintings on paper or silk were not suitable for permanent loans andtherefore requested copies. He obviously understood this to mean painted ­copies
made by artists, because he at the same time emphasised: ‘We cannot exhibit­reproductions.’ In the concluding sentence of the list, Voigt emphasised that the
final choice should be left entirely to the Chinese experts and state officials.18
The designed loans were apparently incorporated into a plan for an exhibition
to mark the tenth anniversary of the founding of the PRC. In some of his lettersin 1958 and 1959, Voigt refers to an exhibition entitled 4000 Years of Chinese Art.
Besides the aforementioned loans, the concept was expanded and also included
stone rubbings as well as costumes, requisites, instruments, paintings, and printed
objects documenting the Chinese opera. Contemporary art, paintings, drawings,
and woodcuts ‘depicting the liberation struggle and the construction of the People’s Republic of China’ were supposed to form a separate section.19
The fact that, in the end, the exhibits were given not as loans but as donations
came as a surprise. The GDR government received official notification about the
donation by letter, dated 28 July 1959 from the PRC’s Ministry of Culture.20 The
collection that was intended for gift by the Chinese side had been exhibited in
the Palace Museum in Beijing before being sent to the GDR. When Voigt visited
China in June 1959, he had already been informed about the donation and visitedthe exhibition. It has not yet been possible to retrace whether all the objects thatwere ultimately part of the gift were shown in the Palace Museum’s presentation.
On the invitation card for the opening of the exhibition in Berlin, the exhibition
title reads Four Thousand Years of Chinese Ceramics and Porcelain, suggestingthat the final selection of objects for the gift was not known on the German side
until it arrived. Moreover, the exhibition that had been planned on the occasionof the tenth anniversary of the founding of the PRC did not open as scheduledon 1 October, the PRC’s national day, but a couple weeks later, on 28 November 1959. This was due to a delay in the shipment from China. The fourteen crates
containing the objects were shipped on the motor vessel ‘Dresden’ and did notreach the port in Wismar on time, arriving belatedly on 10 October.
The government donation comprised 251 exquisite arts and crafts objects,
including ceramics; objects made of lacquer, jade, and enamel; woven silk fabrics
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Figure 1. Selection of Qing dynasty imperial porcelains, donation of the PRC, 1959 © Staatliche Museen zu
Berlin, Museum für Asiatische Kunst, photo: Jörg von Bruchhausen. (See plate 19, p. 256)

Figure 2. Selection of Qing dynasty jade carvings, donation of the PRC, 1959 © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Museum für Asiatische Kunst, photo: Jörg von Bruchhausen. (See plate 20, p. 257)

and embroideries from the Neolithic period, the third millennium bce, to theend of the imperial period in 1911. The 175 ceramic works made up the majorityof the donation. This selection does indeed, with reservations, provide a kind ofan overview of the history of Chinese ceramics. The Neolithic period and theShang (17th? c.–11th c. bce) and Zhou (11th c.–256 bce) periods are covered byeighteen pieces, followed by thirty-four mainly burial objects from the Han (202bce–220 ce) to the Tang (618–907) dynasties. In the general context, two hollow
bricks, probably architectural elements from burial sites, each more than a metre
long, appear unusual. The Han and Tang burial objects do not only comprise vessels but also a considerable number of figurative sculptures, among them female
and male servants, warriors, and animals. Models of household objects such aswells, a stove, and a pigsty address vernacular culture.
Only six ceramics, however, represent the period between the tenth and thefourteenth centuries. Fifteen ceramics can be dated to the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). In addition to plates, bowls, and jars, there are also a sculpture of a Guanyin
and two sculptural roof tiles. By far the largest number of objects, 102 porcelain
vessels, date to the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). Bowls, plates, and vases give an
overview of the porcelains collected and used in literati circles and at court (fig. 1).
132

Uta Rahman-Steinert

Figure 3. Chinese catalogue with black-and-white photographs, cover and inside page with Qing dynasty
porcelains. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Asiatische Kunst, photo (right): Claudia Obrocki.
(See plate 21, p. 258)

The forty-seven textile objects, woven fabrics, fans, bags, and silken bands, ten
utensils made in different enamel techniques, ten jade carvings (fig. 2), and ninepieces of lacquerware which demonstrate a range of different lacquer manufacturing techniques, all date to the last imperial dynasty, the Qing (1644–1912). Certainly, the selection reflects not least the availability and dispensability of objects.
Ritual vessels made of bronze, which Voigt had always listed first in his compilation of suggestions and which were particularly significant to him, were notpart of the donation. Such bronze vessels are among the oldest collectibles. Often
showing cast inscriptions, they were valued equally as testimonies of history andas aesthetic treasures. They were regarded as treasures that conferred identity andserved rulers as emblems of power and authority. It is therefore not surprising that
China did not give away such objects. Why no copies of paintings were provided
is, however, less explicable. As far as contemporary art from the PRC is concerned,
which was also high on Voigt’s wish list, there were obviously other plans on the
Chinese side. An exhibition with this content was put together almost in parallel
and was shown the following year, also at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.21
Accompanying and documenting the donation, the Chinese side prepared a
two-volume catalogue bound in brocade (fig. 3). One volume showed black-andwhite photographs of all objects with brief captions, and the second volume gave
more detailed descriptions including date and place of origin for all items. The
Ostasiatische Sammlung edited a catalogue later, in 1960, the year following thehandover. Unfortunately, the modest publication gives only an inadequate impression of the significance of the gift. The thin brochure lists all the works with theirtechnical details, based on the aforementioned Chinese compilation, but reproduces only thirty-two of them in black-and-white photographs. The objects arearranged chronologically and according to materials or media. The chronologicalorder of the catalogue allowed for the chapters to be opened with short introductions to Chinese history, which, at the same time, made the catalogue a handbook
on cultural history, albeit a concise one. This was not least in keeping with the
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133

educational mission that the museum and its exhibitions were to fulfil ‘for mutual
understanding, creative cultural cooperation, and everlasting friendship with thegreat Chinese cultural people and their socialist people’s government.’22
The catalogue included erroneous aspects: on the title page, contemporary
painting is listed, which frequently leads to the misconception that painting of thetime was also part of the gift. Paintings by living Chinese artists were, however,actually purchased from China.23 They were exhibited alongside the donation in themost representative and largest gallery, the last of the exhibition rooms. Contemporary art always played a crucial role in all the exhibit concepts for the museum.
In propagandistic tones, it was praised as an achievement of the new society:
National liberation and the abolition of capitalist exploitation inspired art,
which has become an expression of the victory of socialism […] the new is
not sought through sensational effects, but through intensive study of theenvironment, the theory of socialism, the laws of art and through masteryof craftsmanship, artistic effect is achieved.24
Unfortunately, only few images of the exhibition Four Thousand Years of Chinese
Ceramic and Porcelain, which opened at the Pergamonmuseum on 28 November 1959, have been handed down (fig. 4). But the arrangement of the exhibition
is reflected in a description Voigt gave in a newspaper article.25 The artworks were
set up in chronological order, starting with Neolithic and Shang and Zhou dynasty
ceramics in the first room and ending with the handicrafts of the Qing dynasty.
The interpretation of the objects was embedded in the socialist narrative of history.
Referencing the works from the Qing dynasty, Voigt stated: ‘They prove that theforeign rulers had to continue the traditions of Chinese art, that Chinese artists
and craftsmen and the national consciousness of the people were stronger thantheir oppressors.’26 In addition to contemporary paintings, the display in the big
hall at the end of the suite of galleries also included a number of modern ceramics.
The objects from the donation formed the basis for the permanent displayof Chinese art in the galleries of the Ostasiatische Sammlung in the north wingof the Pergamonmuseum during the following decades. Over time, works fromother acquisitions were gradually added.
Generally, the press broadly covered the exhibition of the gift. The museum’s
director, Bruno Voigt, had penned most of the articles himself. He emphasisedthat the donation enabled the museum to present an almost complete view ofthe development of Chinese ceramics and porcelain. On this basis, the historyof the country could be introduced in general terms. The Chinese achievementof having produced the earliest porcelain provided the rationale for the focus on
ceramic development. The museum’s mission to educate visitors and to link historical and art historical education to sociopolitical instruction was underlined
throughout the articles. In keeping with the spirit of the times, the donation was134

Uta Rahman-Steinert

Figure 4. Later Chinese porcelains in the exhibition Four Thousand Years of Chinese Ceramic and Porcelain.
Gift of Friendship of the People‘s Republic of China, Pergamonmuseum, 1959 © Staatliche Museen zu
Berlin, Zentralarchiv.

emphasised as a testimony to the friendly relations between the two countries andas a contribution to a better understanding of the history and culture of China.27
Finally, I want to return to the original question that led me to the research
about the history of the donation. The complete circumstances of the donation
remain unclear and still require further research. Where did the objects includedin the gift come from? Who selected them and according to what criteria?
As for the decorative art pieces from later historical periods, small signs on thebottom of some vessels provide a first indication. They are printed with the name
故宫博物院 (Gugong Bowuyuan), Palace Museum, with the additional character新 (xin), which means ‘new’. These objects come from the collection of the ­Palace
Museum in Beijing. ‘New’ means that they found their way into the museum
after 1949 and were not part of the original imperial collection. Numbers and thecharacter 德 (de) for Germany have been added by hand (fig. 5). Initial researchwith Beijing colleagues of the Palace Museum in 2017 showed, however, that only
sixty-nine items with reference to the transfer to the museum in the GDR were
documented in the archive there. The provenance of the other 182 works of art,
before they came to Berlin, remains unknown. A handful of them bear labelsfrom a Beijing dealer in Liulichang, a famous traditional quarter with numerous
antique and artistry dealers. Even the prices are still visible on the small stickers

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135

Figure 5. Lidded box in the form of a peachwith inventory labels of the Palace Museum
Beijing, China, Qing Dynasty (1644–1911),
eighteenth century, inv. no. OAS 1959–245© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für
Asiatische Kunst, photo: Ricarda Brosch.
(See plate 22, p. 259)

on the bottom of the jars. The archaeological items bear numbers and characters
indicating information that is probably related to archaeological sites. In the catalogue the Chinese side provided, the place of excavation is only indicated for someof them. Even in these cases, no date and no precise identification of the relevant
excavation campaign are given. With a considerable number of objects, all information related to their origin is completely missing. To pursue their provenancewill only be possible to research in close cooperation with colleagues in China.
The gift from the PRC was indeed an extraordinary gesture of friendshipand solidarity between China and the GDR. There were rumours that the GDR
planned to donate German artworks in exchange; there is also evidence that thesewere intended to be graphic prints. This would, however, need to be verified byfurther research. These plans probably ended up being cancelled due to the deterioration of political relations between the Soviet Union and the PR of China,
which promptly affected relations between the GDR and China.
Looking at the event, one cannot help but think of the practice of tribute gifts,
which were an essential part of Chinese foreign policy for centuries. In the 1950s,
however, this practice took on a different character. Communist China had a difficult time on the international stage and struggled for diplomatic recognition.
The achievements of the country’s millennia-old culture thus had to serve as therole of ambassador for the new China. They were used to strengthen relationships
and encourage understanding. Shen Yanbing, Minister of Culture of the People’s
Republic of China (Tchën Yän-bing/Mao Dun, 1896–1981), stated in the letterto his fellow minister, Alexander Abusch (1902–1982): ‘We would be pleased if
these cultural objects could serve to deepen the mutual understanding and cultural exchange between the Chinese and German peoples as well as the scientificresearch of the archaeologists and orientalists of the German Democratic Republic.’ Further, he asked that ‘this gift be received as a symbol of the everlasting
friendship between our two countries.’28
Similar donations were also granted to other socialist countries. To date, I
am aware of gifts to Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the Hungarian People’s Republic. In the mid-1950s, the National Gallery in Prague received six136

Uta Rahman-Steinert

ty-five premodern artworks that were officially inventoried in 1958. According
to Michaela Pejčochová, to whom I owe this information, an unusual process lies
behind the donation: the gift was based on objects that official Czechoslovak delegates bought or received in China in 1953 or 1954. However, they were prevented
from taking them out of the country due to the law on protection of cultural
relics. Subsequently, Chinese authorities confiscated the objects and handed themover to the Palace Museum, where Chinese experts researched and described
them on registry cards. Sixty-five artworks were then finally handed back to the
Czechoslovak authorities and donated as an official gift to the National Gallery
in Prague.29
In 1955 the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Asiatic Arts in Budapest received anenormous donation of 575 works, consisting of seven hundred objects, as a giftfrom the Chinese Central Government that were part of a touring exhibition of
the PRC. The donation, delivered in twenty-two crates, contained contemporary
objects: Chinese pottery from Jingdezhen and Shiwan, as well as lacquerware andcloisonné enamel from Beijing, a variety of textiles and jewellery, ivory, and soapstone carvings, and even furniture. According to Györgyi Fajcsák30, ‘Its greatest
value, however, unquestionably lies in the fact that the gift represents a cross section of mid-twentieth-century Chinese applied art.’31
A special case seems to be donations to the Canterbury Museum inChristchurch, New Zealand. New Zealand was never a country one would particularly associate with the Eastern bloc, but the China expert Rewi Alley (1897–
1987) managed to mediate the donations, probably to a great degree thanks tothe esteem in which he was held in China. Alley was a New Zealand writer andpolitical activist who lived in China for most of his live and was labelled as oneof the ‘Ten International Friends of China’ that China awarded in 2009. He wasan active collector and donated his private collection to the Canterbury Museum.
In addition, he managed to arrange official gifts from the Chinese side to theCanterbury Museum. Roger Duff (1912–1978), the museum director at the time,
described the gift to the New Zealand press as follows:
For the first time in its history, the People’s Government of China has
granted a special permit for the export of such items. They are valuable oldpieces of porcelain, jade, bronze, and scroll paintings. With a very large collection of books on Chinese art, they fill seven large crates, now awaiting
direct shipment by a Chinese vessel.32
The donation was followed by several other gifts of objects of decorative art in
the late 1950s. A concrete number is not given, but Alley’s collection and objects
related to it are presented and edited in detail on a website.33 Under the title‘China, Art and Cultural Diplomacy’ in-depth searches are possible. ‘Gifts andExchanges’ lists, for instance, about a dozen pieces given by the Palace Museumin Beijing.34
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137

Presumably, there are other donations from the PRC of which I am not yetaware. It would be a rewarding project to investigate the worldwide efforts of China
in the field of cultural diplomacy with a focus on the gifts of artworks and cultural
relics to different countries. In a world of increasing tensions and demarcations,the aspect of cultural diplomacy, which focuses not only on one’s own interests but
equally on those of the partner’s side, might provide inspiring impulses.

NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

10.
11.
12.
13.

14.
15.
16.

138

The collection was never returned. It is today kept in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and possibly in the
Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Staff of the then Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst (Museum of East AsianArt) had the chance to visit the Hermitage in 2002, and they inspected part of the collection kept there.
For more information on the history of the museum, see Herbert Butz, Wege und Wandel: 100 Jahre
Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst (Berlin: Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, 2006).
Kurt Schifner, Letter to Ludwig Justi, general director of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 18.08.1951, in:
SMB OAS, II VA 806. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Zentralarchiv.
Theo Piana, Letter to the Staatliche Kommission für Kunstangelegenheiten, HA Bildende Kunst,
23.08.1951, in: SMB OAS, II VA 806. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Zentralarchiv.
The Director’s Conference is a body of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in which all directors of themuseums and institutes of the SMB meet once a month for consultation.
Beschluß-Protokoll Nr. 1/52 über die erste Direktorenkonferenz am 24. April 1952 [Decision minutes
no. 1/52 of the first Director’s Conference], 24 April 1952, in: SMB ZA, II A/NG 0339, Staatliche Museen
zu Berlin, Zentralarchiv.
Martin Klar, Handwritten note, 13.05.1952, in: SMB OAS, II VA 806, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Zentralarchiv.
Käte Finsterbusch studied Sinology at Leipzig University, with a focus on Chinese archaeology andpalaeography. Käte Finsterbusch, ‘Das Verhältnis des Shan-hai-djing zur bildenden Kunst’ [The Relationship of the Shan-hai-djing to Visual Arts] (PhD diss., Leipzig University, 1950).
Bruno Voigt was born in Gotha and studied at the Akademie für Bildende Künste (Academy of Fine
Arts) in Weimar. He campaigned against the Nazis in the 1930s with satirical drawings and graphics andwas banned from working in 1933. After his return from captivity, he was active in cultural politics. In
1951 Voigt became director of the Staatliche Museen in Gotha. He was appointed director of the Ostasiatische Sammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, in 1954. ‘Kurzbiographie: Bruno Voigt 1912–1988’,
retrieved 24 March 2022, http://www.hebecker.com/voigt/biographie.htm.
Unidentified author [Theo Piana?], Letter to the Staatliche Kommission für Kunstangelegenheiten, HA
Bildende Kunst, Abt. Kunstsammlungen und Ausstellungen, Hauptreferent Schifner, 16.06.1952, in:
SMB OAS, II VA 806, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Zentralarchiv.
Bruno Voigt, Letter to Theo Piana, administrative director, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 04.10.1952, in:
SMB OAS, II VA 806. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Zentralarchiv.
A letter by Wang Yi 王毅 suggests that he was an employee at the Palace Museum in Beijing, 北京故宮
博物院. Wang Yi, Letter, 27.12.1962, in: SMB OAS, VA 9237, Externer Schriftwechsel 1954-1975, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Zentralarchiv.
Bendix and Schwendtke, Gesellschaft für Kulturelle Verbindungen mit dem Ausland, Reiseplan für die
Delegation chinesische Museumsfachleute Herr Wang Chen-to Herr Wang-I [sic!] [Travel itinerary forthe delegation of Chinese museum specialists Mr Wang Chen-to Mr Wang-I], 28.01.1955, in: SMB OAS,II VA 806. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Zentralarchiv.
‘Guo-hwa – die zeitgenössische Malerei Chinas’, exhibition of the Ostasiatische Sammlung, Staatliche
Museen zu Berlin, 16.09.1957 – 01.01.1958.
Bruno Voigt, Letter to the Ministerium für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten, Fachreferat China, 27.06.1957,
in: SMB OAS, VA 9238, Schriftwechsel extern bzgl. Ausstellungen, 1955-1975, Staatliche Museen zu
Berlin, Zentralarchiv.
The Turfan Collection is named after the first of four royal Prussian expeditions conducted between
1902 and 1914 to the northern Silk Road, in particular to the city of Turpan – today’s Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang in the PRC. The Turpan Collection’s murals, paintings on fabric and paper,clay and wood sculptures, and manuscripts of the third to thirteenth centuries originate for the most

Uta Rahman-Steinert

17.
18.

19.
20.

21.
22.
23.

24.
25.
26.
27.

28.
29.

30.
31.

32.
33.
34.

part from Buddhist temples. Today they form a crucial part of the collection of the Museum für Asiatische Kunst. Large parts of this collection are presently on display in the galleries of the museum in the
Humboldt Forum, with two reconstructed cave temples at the centre of the exhibitions.
Bruno Voigt, Letter to the Ministerium für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten, Fachreferat China, 27.06.1957,
in: SMB OAS, VA 9238, Schriftwechsel extern bzgl. Ausstellungen, 1955-1975, in Staatliche Museen zu
Berlin, Zentralarchiv.
Bruno Voigt, Letter to the Ministerium für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten, Länderreferat China,
Vorschlagsliste der aus der Volksrepublik China zu entleihenden Kunstgegenstände [list of proposals
for loans of art works from the People’s Republic of China], 26.01.1957, in: SMB OAS, VA 9238, Schriftwechsel extern bzgl. Ausstellungen, 1955-1975, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Zentralarchiv.
Bruno Voigt, Letter to the Embassy of the GDR in the People’s Republic of China, 29.10.1958, in: SMB
OAS, VA 9238, Schriftwechsel extern bzgl. Ausstellungen, 1955-1975, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Zentralarchiv.
Tchën Yän-bing [Shen Yanbing/Mao Dun, Minister of Culture of the People’s Republic of China],
Dschang Hsi-jo [Zhang Xiruo, Chairman of the Commission for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries], Letter, 28.07.1959 [date in publication 25.07.1959], German translation published in: Geschenke
der Volksrepublik China: Keramik und Porzellan aus vier Jahrtausenden, Seidenwebereien, Stickereien,
Lack-, Emaille-, Jadearbeiten, zeitgenössische Tuschmalerei (Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1960),
1 (exh. cat.).
‘Zehn Jahre Malerei und Grafik der VR China’, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ostasiatische Sammlung,opening 21.06.1960, until 16.11.1960[?], no catalogue.
Alexander Abusch [Minister of Culture of the GDR], ‘Freude und Dank’, in Geschenke der Volksrepu­
blik China: Keramik und Porzellan aus vier Jahrtausenden, Seidenwebereien, Stickereien, Lack-, Emaille-,
Jadearbeiten, zeitgenössische Tuschmalerei (Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1960), 2 (exh. cat.).
Mainly in the years 1957 and 1958, the museum acquired dozens of paintings by contemporary artists– namely, Qi Baishi, Li Keran, Fu Baoshi, and Wang Xuetao. The acquisitions were made through the
Karl-Marx-Buchhandlung in East Berlin. Due to the deterioration of political relations, trade declinedin the following years. The last acquisitions through this source were made in 1960.
Bruno Voigt, ‘Tat ohne Beispiel. Geschenk der Volksrepublik China an die Staatlichen Museen’, in Neues
Deutschland, 30.01.1960, supplement no. 5.
Voigt, ‘Tat ohne Beispiel’.
Voigt, ‘Tat ohne Beispiel’.
Voigt, ‘Tat ohne Beispiel’; Bruno Voigt, ‘Die Ostasiatische Sammlung. Eine neue Abteilung der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin’, in Berliner Zeitung, 04.12.1960; Bernt Karger-Decker, ‘Kostbare Geschenke aus
China’, in Berliner Abendblatt, date not identified; Elmar Jansen, ‘Kunstschätze aus vier Jahrtausenden:
Wertvolle Geschenke aus China an die Staatlichen Museen in Berlin’, in Neue Zeit, 02.12.1959.
Geschenke der Volksrepublik China: Keramik und Porzellan aus vier Jahrtausenden, Seidenwebereien,
Stickereien, Lack-, Emaille-, Jadearbeiten, zeitgenössische Tuschmalerei, 1.
Michaela Pejčochová, ‘Stones from Other Mountains. Collecting and Exhibiting Chinese Art in Central
Europe, from Rudolf II to the Communist Era’, in Orientations 4, no. 52 (2021): 2–9; Michaela Pejčochová, Sto let jednoho stromu. Lubor Hájek a institucionální sběratelství asijského umění v Československu[One Hundred Years of a Single Tree. Lubor Hájek and Institutional Collecting of Asian Art in Czechoslovakia] (Brno: Books & Pipes, 2021), 79–84.
Dr. Györgyi Fajcsák was the curator of the Chinese collection of the Hopp Ferenc Museum of AsiaticArts from 1989. Since 2007 she has been the director of the institution.
Györgyi Fajcsák, ‘The Chinese Collection’, in Collecting Chinese Art in Hungary from the Early 19th Century to 1945: As Reflected by the Artefacts of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts (Budapest:
Department of East Asian Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, 2007), 35–38. I am indebted to the author
for pointing out her article.
Beattie, James, and Richard Bullen. ‘Embracing Friendship through Gift and Exchange: Rewi Alley andthe Art of Museum Diplomacy in Cold War China and New Zealand’, Australian and New Zealand
Journal of Art 2, no. 16 (2016): 149–166, esp. 157, https//doi.org/10.1080/14434318.2016.1240648.
‘Index’, China, Art and Cultural Diplomacy, retrieved on 1 July 2022, http://www.rewialleyart.nz/.
‘Gifts and exchanges’, China, Art and Cultural Diplomacy, retrieved on 1 July 2022,
http://www.rewialley­art.nz/exhibits/show/presents-from-palace-museum.

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139

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Albrecht, Heinrich. ‘Sozialistischer Realismus wird nicht gezeigt: Ostasiensammlung als Staatsgeschenk
Rot-Chinas – Zu einer Ausstellung im Pergamon-Museum’. Tagesspiegel, 13.12.1959
Beattie, James, and Richard Bullen. ‘Embracing Friendship through Gift and Exchange: Rewi Alley and the Artof Museum Diplomacy in Cold War China and New Zealand’. Australian and New Zealand Journal of
Art 2, no. 16 (2016): 149–166. DOI: 10.1080/14434318.2016.1240648.
Butz, Herbert. Wege und Wandel: 100 Jahre Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst. Berlin: Museum für Ostasiatische
Kunst, SMB, 2006.
Fajcsák, Györgyi. ‘The Chinese Collection’, in Collecting Chinese Art in Hungary from the Early 19th Century to1945: As Reflected by the Artefacts of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts, 35–38. Budapest:
Department of East Asian Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, 2007.
Finsterbusch, Käte. Das Verhältnis des Shan-hai-djing zur bildenden Kunst [The Relationship of the Shan-haidjing to the Visual Arts]. PhD diss., Leipzig University, 1950.
Geschenke der Volksrepublik China: Keramik und Porzellan aus vier Jahrtausenden, Seidenwebereien, Stickereien,
Lack-, Emaille-, Jadearbeiten, zeitgenössische Tuschmalerei. Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1960.
Exhibition catalogue.
Jansen, Elmar. ‘Kunstschätze aus vier Jahrtausenden: Wertvolle Geschenke aus China an die Staatlichen Museenin Berlin’. Neue Zeit, 02.12.1959.
Karger-Decker, Bernt. ‘Kostbare Geschenke aus China’. Berliner Abendblatt, [date not identified, ca. 1960].
Pejčochová, Michaela. Sto let jednoho stromu: Lubor Hájek a institucionální sběratelství asijského umění vČeskoslovensku [One Hundred Years of a Single Tree: Lubor Hájek and Institutional Collecting of Asian
Art in Czechoslovakia]. Brno: Books & Pipes, 2021.
Pejčochová, Michaela. ‘Stones from Other Mountains: Collecting and Exhibiting Chinese Art in Central
Europe, from Rudolf II to the Communist Era’. Orientations 4, no. 52 (2021): 2–9.
Voigt, Bruno. ‘Neolithische Keramiken und bunte Porzellane: Freundschaftsgeschenk des chinesischen Volkes
zum 10. Jahrestag der DDR’. Der Sonntag, 16.08.1959.
Voigt, Bruno. ‘Die Ostasiatische Sammlung: Eine neue Abteilung der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin’. Berliner
Zeitung, 04.12.1960.
Voigt, Bruno. ‘Tat ohne Beispiel: Geschenk der Volksrepublik China an die Staatlichen Museen’. Neues
Deutschland, 30.01.1960: Kunst und Literatur Beilage no. 5.
Die zeitgenössische Malerei Chinas ‘Guo-hwa’. Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ostasiatische Sammlung,1957. Exhibition catalogue.

140

Uta Rahman-Steinert

SAVED FROM THE FURNACE, THROWN INTO
THE COLD WAR: ISLAMIC ART IN HUNGARY
IN THE 1950S
Iván Szántó

Hungarian post-war museology experienced dramatic ruptures and experimented
with strategies to offset them. Like most of the countries that were facing Sovietisation, Hungary suffered severe losses in human and material resources. Many private
collections disappeared or were scattered, often sharing the fate of their owners.1
After 1945, the situation of state institutions stabilised in some respects, but this happened at the expense of private collections: as noble estates and a significant part ofecclesiastical collections were liquidated and nationalised, many former well-to-do
urban collectors were also evicted, and their possessions taken over by the state.
The more fortunate ones, among them Edmund (Ödön) de Unger (1918–2011), thewould-be founder of the Keir Collection, were allowed to emigrate.2 The impositionof mandatory state registration on art objects destroyed the previous market structures and blocked the circulation of artifacts, while it was also a means of exertingpressure, which forced owners in dire financial situations to sell or donate theirvaluables to the state.3 Conversely, some museums, libraries, etc., saw a net growthin their holdings after the war, despite the fact that these, too, were often decimatedin 1944-5. These increases and changes necessitated the application of professional
criteria for storage and cataloguing, even as academic standards were subordinatedto displays of adherence to the Stalinist model. For example, during the liquidationof large private libraries, a committee was created, which strove to redistribute theacquired volumes according to a bibliographic system, thus laying the foundationfor Hungary’s network of public and specialised libraries that still operates today.4
Similar considerations prevailed in the transformation of museum collections, suchas when, starting in 1951, the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Asian [then Eastern Asiatic]
Art carved out an independent Middle Eastern collection unit.5
Given that until the 1940s, non-European collections were largely shaped byprivate connoisseurs, the sudden increase of public collections in this field, inprinciple, gave the new regime opportunity to put forward previously unseen
Saved from the Furnace, thrown into the Cold War: Islamic Art in Hungary in the 1950s

141thematic exhibitions. In the first years after the war, however, financial and ideological constraints choke the life out of any potential projects outside of socialist
realism. Museums, at most, could start organising and sorting their new acquisitions behind the scenes, and intensive restoration work was also carried out,
thanks to which many seriously damaged works of art, including Islamic objects,
were preserved. During these years, some socialist realist artists of Hungarian
origin were able to reconnect with their homeland after decades-long Soviet
emigration, armed with experiences they had gained during the Sovietisation of
the art of, among other areas, the Central Asian republics. Such was Béla Uitz
(1887–1972), for example, who assumed the lead role in creating a top-down
artistic identity for Soviet Kyrgyzstan in the 1930s.6 Atheist dissidents banishedfrom Muslim countries, like the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, were given a herolike reception in Hungary and accorded with the highest state awards.7 The gap
between the ideological hostility towards material vestiges of a seemingly defunctage of spirituality and the sudden wealth of newly acquired art treasures that the
new regime brought into public ownership was yet to be bridged.
The death of Joseph Stalin (5 March 1953) and ensuing changes in the Hungarian party leadership galvanised this moribund museum scene. Isolated anddestitute, the government allowed pre-war figures of non-European academic
fields back to the fore as it was eyeing their unique international contact network
even more than their linguistic and cultural expertise. This extremely narrow andconfidential circle included, for instance, Ervin Baktay (1890–1963), who not
only had professional but also family ties with the upper circles of India throughhis niece, the painter Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941).8 In a 1942 book, written during the height of anti-Soviet war efforts in Hungary and the Japanese occupationof Burma, Baktay envisioned the near fall of British India.9 A year after the war,
he was appointed deputy director of the East Asian Art Museum and keeper of
its Indian and South-East Asian collections, a post he kept until 1958. In thiscapacity, he was able to organise an exhibition of Indian art already in 1951, celebrating India’s independence, which remained open until 1953, when some of
it would be shown in the countryside.10 A similar but much younger and more
controversial figure was Ernő Hetényi (1912–1999).11 Already in the 1930s, hecame into contact with Buddhism through the originally India-based but German-founded Arya Maitreya Mandala order, and then, in 1952 – without doubt at
the behest of the Hungarian Working People’s Party – he established its pendant,
the Budapest Buddhist Mission, which still operates today.12 A Buddhist mission
in anti-clerical Hungary gave Hetényi the opportunity to nurture his previous
professional relationships, authenticate the state principle of religious freedom,and monitor members or would-be members. Gyula Germanus (1884–1979)
undertook similar tasks in the Islamic area. In the spirit of his teacher, the ‘pseudo-dervish’ Ármin Vámbéry (1832–1913), he (supposedly) converted to Islam in
1930, during a three-year trip to India, and then, almost immediately, in 1934,
set out for the Hajj, during which he met King Ibn Saud.13 He acted as a go-be142

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Figure 1. Ervin Baktay (front right corner) and Géza Fehérvári (back, fourth from right) at a museologists’luncheon in Gyula, 5 May 1955 (After Géza Fehérvári, Három nemzet szolgálatában: Visszaemlékezések(Budapest: Kairosz, 2008), 84).

tween between Prime Minister Count Pál Teleki (second term: 1939–1941) andMiddle Eastern political figures and also served as the director of the Royal Oriental Academy until its closure in 1948.14 Thanks to his former student, Mátyás
Rákosi (1892–1971), who advanced to become the leader of Communist Hungary, Germanus reemerged at the University of Budapest as a professor of Arabic
studies. Moreover, similarly to, but in a more ostentatious way than the Buddhist
Hetényi, he carefully built himself up as ‘the’ Hungarian ambassador of Islam, aone-man impersonation of Muslim piety, the heir of Vámbéry. He was allowed
to publicly perform Muslim prayers in front of an Ottoman mihrab inside themediaeval church near his apartment, while ordinary churchgoers risked retribution.15 Although Germanus devoted much of his academic interests to Classicaland Modern Arabic literature, he encouraged Géza Fehérvári (1926–2012, fig. 1),
a young disciple of him, to study art history and helped him find a job in the
Eastern Asiatic Arts Museum in 1952.16 Fehérvári joined Edit Egyed (1928–1997,
spouse of the ethnographer Vilmos Diószegi) who had just been entrusted withthe cataloguing of its still unprocessed Islamic material, in addition to tracing andacquiring more objects from public and private holdings.17
Drawing on the experience of Baktay’s India exhibition, their first project (1954)
presented the art of South-East Asia and wished to contribute to what was promSaved from the Furnace, thrown into the Cold War: Islamic Art in Hungary in the 1950s

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Figure 2. Copper ewer. Iran, nineteenth century, Gift of the
Mátyás Rákosi Iron- and Metalworks. Ferenc Hopp Museumof Asian Arts in Budapest, inv. no. 52.60.1. Photograph:
Ferenc Balázs. (See plate 23, p. 260)

ulgated as the struggle of the peoples of French
Indochina against imperialism.18 Preceding thislarge-scale public display, Fehérvári and Egyed
were involved in a more discreet and peculiar
task which exemplifies the economic and cultural conditions of the period. According to therecollection of Fehérvári, the museum received
sometime in late 1952 or early 1953 a notification from the Csepel Iron Works, then named
after Mátyás Rákosi and directed by the brotherof the latter, about the appearance of loads of old metalware in scrap metal shipments from the Middle East.19 From time to time, the two museologists were calledout to the Csepel Freeport, occasionally accompanied by the retired director of themuseum, Zoltán Felvinczi-Takács (1880–1964), to examine the cargoes and sort
anything worthy of salvage. In this way, several hundred bowls, vases, etc., weretransferred to the museum.20 These mostly represent eighteenth to twentieth century Egyptian and Levantine homewares but include Iranian objects as well (fig. 2).21
What can one make of this curious find? Fehérvári believes that the shipments
arrived in energy-poor Hungary in response to the forced and barely sustainable
post-war reindustrialisation goals.22 True, supply difficulties of energy-demanding
industries were chronic in 1950s Hungary which had to resort to bulk imports ofscrap metal to feed the growing needs of its metallurgical plants.23 But this does not
explain the content of the shipment: even the material-deficient Hungarian economy
did not need to rely on a few hundred or even a few thousand metal bowls. Despite
the turbulent political links, Hungary maintained stable economic relations with
Egypt, the probable source of most of the artifacts.24 However, neither Egypt nor
its neighbours were able to supply scrap metals in industrial quantity as they wereeven more scarcely provided with such raw materials than Hungary. In fact, statistics
show that Hungarian exports to Egypt (industrial goods, including machine tools,
railway carriages, and chemicals) far outweighed imports (ca. 40,000 bales of cotton
annually) throughout the early 1950s.25 Thus, other factors might be speculated tohave been at play when these shipments landed ashore in Budapest. In particular,
the Egyptian political upheaval of 1952 might be considered. Riots known as the‘Cairo fire’ that killed dozens of Britons and pro-British persons and ransacking several hundred upmarket properties in Cairo broke out on January 26 1952.26 Unfortunately, there are almost no Egyptian archival sources available even today for an
accurate reconstruction of the events and this is why the degree of American and144

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Soviet involvements is unclear, despite the presumable role of both. On the other
hand, the ensuing ‘Revolution of Free Officers’ between July 23 and 26 of the same
year was carried out by US intelligence officers who would also orchestrate the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh on 19 August 1953.27 The
new regime abolished the Egyptian monarchy on 18 July 1953 and ended ‘foreign
rule’; the deposed King Farouk fled the country and his collections were auctioned by
Sotheby’s in the Qubba Palace, one of his former residences, on 12 February 1954.28
The repercussions quickly reached Egyptian museums. Gaston Wiet (1887–1971),
the last foreign director of the Museum of Arab Antiquities was forced to resign as
early as 1951 and his seat remained vacant for almost a year until the appointment ofZaki Muhammad Hasan (1908–1957).29 The latter initiated sweeping reforms in themuseum, renaming it Museum of Islamic Art, yet his French education, hallmarked
by his lifelong advocacy for the ideals of European Enlightenment and the reconciliation of image-making and Islam, failed to win the trust of the country’s new leaders
who had him replaced with Berlin-trained Muhammad Mustafa.30 Mustafa’s new
exhibition, under the title Unity in Islam, fit better for Nasserism.
In principle, countries in the Soviet Bloc regarded the nationalist developments
in Egypt with suspicion and kept a distance from them. In practice, however, they
did their best to maintain or even extend their interests there. This explains why
Commander Gamal Salem (1918–1968), one of the Free Officers and Minister ofCommunications of the new government, suddenly appeared in Budapest in mid1952, a few weeks after the coup, meeting with Chinese and Hungarian officials
who assisted in Egypt’s attempt to revoke Taiwan’s formal recognition and establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China instead.31
We may never know whether the arrival of this unprecedented load of Islamic
metalwork in the Iron Works was just a coincidence and it is safe to say that theobjects originate from multiple sources: there is evidence of inconclusive negotiations between Hungary and Iran in 1953 about scrap metal purchases from thelatter.32 Be that as it may, it was not the last intimate episode between Communist
Hungary and Islamic Art. In anticipation of momentous changes in the colonies,
post-Stalin Oriental studies were being reorganised to disconnect them from their‘Bourgeois’ nineteenth-century traditions in favour of an anti-imperialist stance.33
Anti-imperialism and de-Stalinisation reached full bloom by 1955, the year of
the Bandung Declaration. Western and Eastern powers outdid each other before
and during the conference to court Third World countries that were increasingly
aware of their growing authority. Newspapers and journals across the Eastern
Bloc reported at length about the struggle of North African, South-West Asian,and other people for freedom.34 Meanwhile, US-exile former Hungarian Prime
Minister Ferenc Nagy (1903–1979) toured Asian capitals before Bandung as thevice-president of the International Peasant Union (IPU) and convinced Ceylon
Prime Minister John Kotelawala (1953–1956) to confront the audience of his
speech with the revelation that European Soviet vassal states were protectorates asmuch as any dependent territory in Africa or Asia.35
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It was during this global situation that the Museum of Applied Arts decided toorganise an exhibition, entitled Near and Middle Eastern industrial arts from more
recent periods, jointly with the Hungarian National Museum and the Museum of
Ethnography. In the anti-clerical climate of the era, the idea faced some opposition
and its ultimate victory reflected rifts within the ranks of the Hungarian Working People’s Party. Szabad Nép [Free People], the official party outlet, reported
that the exhibition had been opened at noon on Saturday, 19 March 1955, in thepresence of excellences from the scientific and art community, state dignitaries,
and members of diplomatic missions.36 Turkologist-Mongolist Lajos Ligeti (1902–
1987), vice-president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, gave the opening
speech, followed by an award ceremony whereby a representative of the Ministryof Culture presented retired director of the Eastern Asiatic Arts Museum Zoltán
Felvinczi-Takács with the award badge ‘For Socialist Culture’ in recognition of his
50 years of scientific work. 26 years earlier, Felvinczi-Takács was co-organiser ofwhat was the last large-scale exhibition of Oriental art in Budapest up to that day.37
Those present, then, went through the exhibition which comprised ‘thirteenth
to nineteenth-century Egyptian, Syrian, Mohammedan [my emphasis], Persian,Turkish, Greek and Indian applied art.’38 This eclectic list summarises the exhibition quite aptly. Mostly written by Fehérvári and Egyed but published anonymously, an accompanying booklet in a similar vein was available for visitors.
‘Islam’ as a term, too, appeared in the exhibition inconspicuously, hidden between
the lines, like news commentaries were in the press. The wording of the title andwhat was omitted from it were carefully measured: it framed the exhibition ingeopolitical, not religious, terms and it emphasised its materialistic, instead of its
spiritual, qualities. The term ‘more recent’ had its importance, too: highlighting
the period when traditional craftspeople were evolving into the modern industrial working class and when court art was giving way to more widely available
crafts. Through this careful wording, the organisers could also leave in a benevolent obscurity the fact that Hungarian museums preserved very few outstanding
objects from earlier periods, something which subsequent exhibitions of Islamicart would also have to reckon with (the majority of the objects were dating
between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries).39
On the front cover of the guide, a cast steel deer statue from Qajar Persia is
depicted in drawing (fig. 3).40 This choice had its origin in an article about West
Asian zoomorphic objects written by Edit Egyed in preparation for the exhibition:
sculpture being the most corporeal and arguably least ‘Islamic’ genre of all, it might
have offered itself as a good starting point for an unfamiliar audience, even though
the article could not bring its readers close to the original purpose of these objects.41
After a brief outline of the Asiatic mode of production and the languid development of feudalism in Byzantium, the Sasanian Empire, and Khwarazm (‘whichflourished in the territory of today’s Soviet Union’), the booklet summarised theArab conquest of the Middle East which it explained with the overpopulation of
Arabia and the desire of its elite for looting.42 Although, the text goes on to say, the146

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Figure 3. Front cover of Közel- és Középkelet
ujabbkori iparművészete, exh. cat. [Museum of
Applied Arts, 1955]. (See plate 24, p. 261)

conquests had a religious overtone, they
were catalysed by a popular movement
which established full-fledged feudalism in the annexed lands. In a somewhat apologetic manner, the authors
claim that despite religious restrictions,this movement allowed individual
creativity and national characteristics
to manifest in art.43 In support of thisassumption, the role of subsequentconquests (Seljuq, Mongol, Ottoman) is
discussed in the guide in a positive light,
drawing attention to the assimilative qualities of these events and emphasising theextent to which Hungarian folk art is indebted to the Ottomans. The text identifies geometric ornament as the core of this artistic tradition which could nurture
figural arts, ‘chiefly in the more relaxed Shia territories.’44
Following this historical and aesthetic overview, the booklet guided thevisitor through the exhibition.45 As a gesture towards conquerors of the time,
the first object was a furnished Kyrgyz yurt from the Soviet Union; the carpets
inside the tent and in the neighbouring gallery suggested a progress in industrial development from nomad crafts to luxurious commodities for the international market. Besides three Mediaeval examples, the next section included Early
Modern Islamic metalwork. Opposite, a set of Persian inlaid furniture, the Qajar
steel animals, mentioned above, and mace heads were assembled in a group. In
another corner, Indian metalwork (incised copper and Bidri ware) and textiles
were exhibited, while separate cases were devoted to Persian, Syrian, and Spanish
ceramics. Ottoman art was accorded an honoured position in the exhibition: notonly carpets, horse trappings, arms and armour were displayed but, to allow a
glimpse on popular life, also some Karagöz shadow puppetry. Recent finds from
Ottoman Buda, Esztergom, and Eger extended the scope of the display to include
Hungary and underline the commonalities between the two artistic traditions.
The Ottoman section also included a partially assembled wooden interior fromDamascus, dated 1802-3 CE (1217 AH) and acquired by the Museum of Applied
Arts in 1885.46 Towards the end of the visitor route, Persian arms, jewellery, and,as a last flash from early Islamic art, ceramic shards from Fustat (Cairo) could beseen.47 Whether some of the metalware rescued from the Csepel Iron Foundry
also appeared among the exhibits is unknown – but probably they did not.
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Figure 4. Detail from Közel- és Középkelet ujabbkori
iparművészete, exh. cat. [Museum of Applied Arts,
1955]. (See plate 25, p. 262)

The text concluded in an educative
tone, suddenly addressed not to Hungarian visitors, but the Muslim world bysaying that ‘the exhibition aims to help
these peoples get to know each other better.’48 While this postscript was probably
missed by most Muslim visitors, the firstof the fourteen in-text line drawings in
the publication was certainly not: it was
the basmala, shown without translationor comment (fig. 4).49 Interestingly, thus,
while the guide did much to de-emphasise the Islamic aspect of this art (neverdescribing it as such) for the local audience, it reached out to Muslims by selecting the opening phrase of the Qur’an as the only complete Arabic (and foreign)text in the entire publication. Given that the basmala appears without translationand explanation, it remained incomprehensible for the vast majority of Hungarian readers in the same way as the Hungarian text did so for foreigners and thisenabled the text and image to strike different chords. Among the few potential
Muslim visitors whom these messages might have been targeted one can reckon
with Iranian refugees who fled to Hungary after the American coup of 1953.50
This hidden religious dimension of the overtly secular exhibition canbe traced further in Géza Fehérvári’s short report about it which appeared inIslamic Review, published by the Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, inNovember 1955.51 That ‘the young Hungarian scholar of Arabic and Muslim [myemphasis] art’ could publish it in the United Kingdom is more noteworthy than
the summary itself; the most curious aspect of this feat, however, was that thearticle was submitted not to an academic or art journal but a Muslim missionary organ. Obviously approved by the Communist leadership of Hungary, andperhaps even encouraged by it, the article owed its existence to the mediation of
Gyula Germanus who had been associated with the Woking Muslims since his
presumed conversion.52 While this connection has not been discussed in recent
assessments of Germanus, it has been argued that his intermediary towards Islam
was Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), whom he had met in Hungary throughhis founding chairmanship of the Hungarian PEN Club (1926–1930).53 Tagore,on his part, had developed collaboration with the Lahore-branch of the Ahmadiyya movement which had dominated the Woking mosque for half a century.54
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Proselytisation had been at the core of the Woking Ahmadiyya’s European mission since 1913 when it had set out to spread Islam in Europe via converts fromall walks of society.55‘Al-Hajj Prof. Dr. ‘Abdul Karim Germanus’ became the first, and for a while
only, as well as by far the most prolific, contributor to the Islamic Review fromthe Eastern Bloc.56 His activity started in 1951 with an inconspicuous note about
the Arabic alphabet and continued with similar aphoristic musings until October 1956, i.e., the outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution and the Suez Crisis.57
Concentrating on religious matters, interfaith dialogue, and Cold War politics, art
was not of central interest for the Review, a few more contributions, nevertheless,did appear besides Fehérvári’s note, including one article by Zaki Muhammad
Hasan (by then an émigré in Baghdad), and a posthumous publication by David
Storm Rice (1913–1962), Fehérvári’s mentor in London.58
On the sidelines of the exhibition, Germanus received his first post-war invitation to the Arab World in May 1955; he was received by different membersof the revolutionary government of Egypt, including President Nasser himself.59
This underlines Germanus’ stature within the Eastern Bloc.
Presenting about one thousand items, the exhibition remained open for six
months and a cross-section was shown next summer in the newly opened castle of Siklós.60 The location had a significance beyond itself. Personally captured
by Sultan Suleyman I in 1543, this castle was witness to crucial events before,
during, and after the Ottoman period.61 Having been left by its hereditary owners in 1945, its archaeological survey and reconstruction by the state began in
1955. In itself, this would not have been enough for it to be the venue among
the many Ottoman monuments in Hungary, but Siklós enjoyed the additional
benefit of being located in strategic proximity to Yugoslavia. While the normalisation between the Soviet and Yugoslav state parties progressed at a good pacein 1955, the settlement of post-Stalin relations between Hungary and Yugoslavia
proved to be difficult due to the extremely hostile relationship between Josip Tito
and Rákosi until the latter’s political fall in July 1956.62 Meanwhile, the ‘second
line’ tried to speed up the settlement of relations with various gestures, which
was urged by Belgrade’s newly gained key position in the non-aligned movement.
This explains not only the sudden restoration of a peripheric monument on the
Yugoslav border, but also the fact that a Middle Eastern exhibition popped up
there. All at once, Hungarian cultural policy discovered Ottoman heritage in1955 and appraised it like never before. While at Buda Castle, the memories ofthe Habsburg past were erased with lustful pleasure, some Ottoman monuments,
which had been destroyed by the constructions of the Austro-Hungarian period,
were being rebuilt from scratch.63 In 1955, Fehérvári was commissioned to excavate Szigetvár Castle, the site of Sultan Suleyman’s death, and to convert the shoe
factory operating there into a museum.64 At the same time, his colleague, Géza
Fehér (1917–2005), excavated in Buda, Esztergom, and Érd, while Győző Gerő(1924–2011, a student of Germanus) worked in Eger, Pécs, and Siklós.65 In the
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next year, Fehérvári was given an opportunity for a one-month study trip to the
Muslim regions of Yugoslavia.66 Combined, these events draw a pattern, whereby
Islamic art, including its local heritage, were viewed as a window to reach out tothe Third World. In post-Stalinist Hungary, the Yugoslav model of politics waseagerly examined, down to its seemingly successful internalisation of the Bosnian‘Orient’ which offered a blueprint to follow in heritage management.
This idealistic concept was shattered by the 1956 uprising, and then by theSoviet invasion. During the revolution and the Suez Crisis, Aladár Dobrovits(1909–1970), the Egyptologist director of the Museum of Applied Arts, undertook
his first ever visit to Egypt and was preparing Fehérvári’s follow-up visit there,scheduled for either the end of 1956 or the beginning of next year.67 Fehérvári,however, took an active role in the political events during these very days andyear’s end would find him not in Egypt but in an Austrian refugee camp.68 After
1956, Islamic art lost its previous relevance. It did not disappear completely fromthe exhibition scene of the decade, though. In 1958, an UNESCO-organised exhibition of colour reproductions of Persian paintings opened in the Institute of Cultural Relations, signalling a timid Hungarian return attempt to the international
stage via Islamic art. The original paintings were in the Golestan Palace in Tehran
and the Chehel Sotun Palace in Isfahan. Written by André Godard (1881–1965),
the director of the Iranian Archaeological Institute, a four-page brochure in Hungarian was available for visitors which included a list of exhibited artworks.69 It
can be deduced from this list that the exhibition was not more than the display ofimages from a large coffee table volume by Godard and Basil Gray (1904–1989),
published in 1956.70 Although this event was a far cry from the 1955 exhibition,yet, as reported by Népszabadság, the post-revolutionary incarnation of Szabad
Nép, it opened with a proper ceremony.71 The speech was given by Professor Germanus – in a clear sign that even the upheaval of 1956 could not shake the moststable pillar of continuity. His opening remarks, thus, added yet another footnote
to the story of how Hungarian Cold War rhetoric gave Islamic art a new lease oflife; saving its artifacts first from the furnace and then from obscurity.

NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

150

László Mravik, ed. The “Sacco di Budapest” and Depredation of Hungary 1938–1949 (Budapest: Hungarian National Gallery, 1998).
József Martin, Iszlám művészet: Unger Ödön világhírű gyűjteménye a Manor House-ban / Islamic Art:
Edmund de Unger’s World Famous Collection in the Manor House (Budapest: Mundus, 2010), 13.
For example, see Béla Kelényi, ‘The History of “Modern” Persian Art Collections in Hungary, ’ in Artisans at the Crossroads: Persian Arts of the Qajar Period, 1796–1925, eds Béla Kelényi and Iván Szántó(Budapest: Museum of Applied Arts and Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts, 2010), 144–145.
Ferenc Kégli, ‘Adalékok könyvtárügyünk homályos éveiről, 1945–1949: az Országos Könyvtári Központelső évei és a körzeti könyvtárak szervezése.’ Könyvtári Figyelő, no. 1 (2016): 34–50.
Kelényi, ‘The History of “Modern” Persian Art Collections in Hungary’, 145.
He worked there between 1936 and 1938. Zoltán Nagy, ‘Uitz Béla kirgiziai hagyatéka és a szovjet monumentális művészet.’ Ars Hungarica 1976, no. 2: 243–272; Zoltán Nagy, ‘Uitz Béla Kirgíziában.’ Ars Hun-

Iván Szántó

7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

13.

14.
15.
16.

17.
18.
19.

20.

21.
22.
23.
24.

25.
26.
27.

garica 1974, no. 2: 423–440, concerning his remarks about the International Congress of Iranian art(held in Leningrad in 1935), see 425.
James H. Meyer, Red Star over the Black Sea: Nâzım Hikmet and his Generation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 299.
Baktay studied painting in Munich with his fellow countryman, Simon Hollósy, whose younger brother,fellow painter József Hollósy, was one of the first Buddhist converts in Hungary. Kelényi, ‘The Historyof “Modern” Persian Art Collections in Hungary,’ 140–145.
Ervin Baktay, India szabadságot akar (Budapest: Írás, 1942).
India ötezer éves kultúrája, Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts, June 2 1951 – 1 July 1953. The
exhibition featured the permanent holdings of the museum which could be presented on a rotational
basis only, in the form of thematic displays, due to the lack of space.
In the absence of reliable sources, a critical assessment of his career is still missing, to contextualise hisnumerous works on Buddhism and other Asian religions.
About the Arya Maitreya Mandala, see Martin Baumann, ‘Culture Contact and Valuation: Early German Buddhists and the Creation of a “Buddhism in Protestant Shape”.’ Numen 44, no. 3 (1997): 276;
Martin Baumann, Der buddhistische Orden Arya Maitreya Mandala: Religionswissenschaftliche Darstellung einer westlich-buddhistischen Gemeinschaft, Religionen vor Ort 3 (Marburg: Remid, 1994).
Adam Mestyan, ‘Materials for a History of Hungarian Academic Orientalism: The Case of Gyula Germanus.’ Die Welt des Islams 54, no. 1 (2014): 4–33. Concerning a ban on the pilgrimage of recent converts, especially from the West, issued in 1936 by the Saudi monarch, see William Ochsenwald, ‘Islamand Loyalty in the Saudi Hijaz, 1926–1939.’ Die Welt des Islams 47, no. 1 (2007): 16–17.
Adam Mestyan, ‘“I Have To Disguise Myself:” Orientalism, Gyula Germanus, and Pilgrimage as Cultural Capital, 1935–1965,’ in The Hajj and Europe in the Age of Empire, ed. Umar Ryad (Leiden: Brill,2017), 216–239.
He allegedly wrote the Arabic inscription which was visible on the mihrab until its recent restoration,although this is not discussed in the most recent essay about the mihrab; see Eszter Kovács, and Adrienn
Papp, ‘A mihrábfülke az újabb kutatások tükrében.’ Műemlékvédelem, no. 6 (2010): 408, 412 note 3.
Géza Fehérvári, Három nemzet szolgálatában: Visszaemlékezések (Budapest: Kairosz, 2008), 82–83; Iván
Szántó, ‘Géza Fehérvári (1926–2012).’ Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 66, no. 3(2013): 350; see also Yuka Kadoi, ‘Fehérvári, Géza’ in The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
Fehérvári, Három nemzet szolgálatában, 83–84.
Hátsó-India és Indonézia művészete, Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts, 14 November 1953
– 10 April 1956.
Fehérvári, Három nemzet szolgálatában, 83–84, for an overview of the metallurgical plant, its nationalisation and means of production, see Ákos Kugyela, ‘A Weiss Manfréd konszerntől a Rákosi Mátyás
Művekig: egy családi vagyon végnapjai.’ ArchívNet 4, no. 6 (2004). Artifacts from the ancient world are
not reported in the assemblage and the Museum of Fine Arts was not involved in the transfer. I am
grateful for Katalin Kóthay (Museum of Fine Arts) for the information.
Tibor Horváth, ed., A Hopp Ferenc Kelet-Ázsiai Művészeti Múzeum Emlékkönyve [Handbook of theFerenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts] (Budapest: Népművelési Propaganda Iroda, 1970), 105;
Györgyi Fajcsák, ed., Ázsia művészete: A százéves Hopp Ferenc Ázsiai Művészeti Múzeum gyűjteményei
(Budapest: Szépművészeti Múzeum and Hopp Ferenc Ázsiai Művészeti Múzeum, 2019), 239.
Béla Kelényi, and Iván Szántó, eds, Artisans at the Crossroads: Persian Arts of the Qajar Period, 1796–1925 (Budapest: Museum of Applied Arts and Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts, 2010),
exh. cat., nos. 4.2.14, 4.2.26.
Fehérvári, Három nemzet szolgálatában, 83–84; for the industrial background, see Pál Germuska, ‘A
szocialista iparosítás Magyarországon 1947–1953 között,’ in Magyarország a jelenkorban: Évkönyv 9,
eds Éva Standeisky, Zsuzsanna Kőrösi, and János Rainer M. (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 2001), 147–172.
Nóra Fügedi, ‘Magyar Kultúra a világban: Egyiptomi-Magyar kulturális Kapcsolatok 1945–1964.’ Acta
Historica (Szeged) 134 (2012): 143–151.
The two countries reestablished diplomatic relations to ambassadorial level in 1947, only to freeze themnext year when the Hungarian ambassador, Viktor Csornoky, was recalled from his posting in Cairoand summarily executed for espionage allegations. László J. Nagy, ‘Magyar-egyiptomi kapcsolatok amásodik világháború után (1947–1955) Hungarian–Egyptian Relations after the World War II (1947–
1955).’ Belvedere 3 (2015): 17–18. The first modest Hungarian effort in the 1950s to exhibit artworks
in Cairo was a children’s drawing exhibition planned for January 1952 at the Art Museum of Cairo,
according to an embassy document (MOL – HU – MNL – OL – XIX – J 11a/003025-1951.XII.28).
J. Nagy, ‘Magyar-egyiptomi kapcsolatok a második világháború után (1947–1955)’, 18.
Harold Hindle James, ‘Personal Report on Riots in Cairo, 26 Jan 1952,’ n.d..
Michael T. Thornhill, Road to Suez: The Battle of the Canal Zone (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2006), 88.

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28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.

40.
41.

42.
43.
44.
45.
46.

47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.

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Anonymous, The Palace Collections of Egypt: Catalogue of the Highly Important and Extremely Valuable
Collection of Coins and Medals, the Property of the Republic of Egypt: Cairo, 24 February – 6 March, 1954
(London: Sotheby and Co., 1954).
Donald Malcolm Reid, Contesting Antiquity in Egypt: Archaeologies, Museums, and the Struggle for Identities from World War I to Nasser (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2015), 167–196.
Reid, Contesting Antiquity in Egypt, 185–196.
J. Nagy, ‘Magyar-egyiptomi kapcsolatok a második világháború után (1947–1955)’, 21, the establishment of contacts in a Cairo apartment is recorded in an embassy report which is preserved in the
Hungarian National Archives (HU – MNL – OL – XIX – J 11a/00160-1952 XI.1).
Hungarian National Archives, HU – MNL – OL – XIX – J 15a, no. 1, 00940/1/1953, in reference to acertain Dr. Aghavi and Sadeghiani, a trader, datable to mid-1953.
Michael Kemper, ‘Propaganda for the East, scholarship for the West: Soviet strategies at the 1960 International Congress of Orientalists in Moscow,’ in Reassessing Orientalism: Interlocking Orientologies
during the Cold War, eds Michael Kemper and Artemy M. Kalinovsky (London: Routledge, 2015), 172.
Ottó Sütő, ‘Francia Észak-Afrika népeinek harca a gyarmatosítók ellen.’ Társadalmi Szemle, 1955, nos.
2–3: 199; György Göncöl, ‘Bandung és a békés együttlétezés elve,’ Társadalmi Szemle, no. 5 (1955):
85–97.
István Csicsery-Rónay, ‘Nagy Ferenc missziója a bandungi konferencia idején,’ in Nagy Ferenc miniszterelnök: Visszaemlékezések, tanulmányok, cikkek, ed. István Csicsery-Rónay (Budapest: Ezerkilencszáznegyvenöt Alapítvány and Occidental Press, 1995), 123–125.
Anonymous, ‘Megnyílt a Közel- és Közép-Kelet újabbkori iparművészete című kiállítás,’ Szabad Nép,
20 March 1955: 5.
Károly Csányi and Zoltán Felviczi-Takács, Keleti művészeti kiállítás / Ausstellung orientalischer Kunst(Budapest: Magyar Gyűjtők és Művészetkedvelők Egyesülete, 1929).
Anonymous, ‘Megnyílt a Közel- és Közép-Kelet’.
This was, for instance, the rationale behind the 2010 exhibition of Qajar art in the same museum whichdisplayed, to some extent, the same artifacts as the 1955 event. Géza Fehérvári presided over both exhibitions, the first one marking the beginning of his professional career and the 2010 one its end. When
Fehérvári co-organised a further exhibition of ‘later’ Middle Eastern art in Hungary (at the castle of
Keszthely) after the political changes of 1989, he labelled it as ‘Islamic’ without hesitation. Dzsehán Sz.
Radzsab, Géza Fehérvári, Sándor Fodor, and Anikó Molnár, Az iszlám világa: Az iszlám művészete a
18-20. században (Keszthely: Helikon Kastélymúzeum, 2002).
Cf., Kelényi and Szántó, eds, Artisans at the Crossroads, cat. no. C.4.1.11.
Edit Diószegi-Egyed, ‘Közelkeleti állatplasztikákról,’ in Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei, vol. 2,
ed. Aladár Dobrovits (Budapest: Iparművészeti Múzeum, 1955), 62–73; cf. Fellinger, Gwenaëlle, ed.,L’Empire des roses: Chefs d’œuvre de l’art persan du XIXe siècle (Lens: Louvre-Lens / Gent: Snoeck, 2018),
exh. cat., nos. 79–81.
Anonymous, Közel- és Középkelet ujabbkori iparművészete (Budapest: Museum of Applied Arts, 1955),
exh. cat., 1–2. I am grateful to librarian Tünde Farkas for making accessible a copy of this publication in
the now-closed Museum of Applied Arts.
Anonymous, A Közel- és Középkelet, 2–3.
Anonymous, A Közel- és Középkelet, 4–5.
Anonymous, A Közel- és Középkelet, 5–26.
Iván Szántó, ‘Ein Damaskuszimmer in der Frühgeschichte des Budapester Kunstgewerbe-Museums.’ In
Gezimmertes Morgenland. Orientalische und orientalisierende Holzinterieurs in Mitteleuropa im späten
19. Jahrhundert, eds Maximilian Hartmuth and Julia Rüdiger (Vienna: Böhlau, 2021), 169–177; Iván
Szántó, ‘The Damascus Room, Lechner, and the Domestication of Oriental Space,’ in Ödön Lechner inContext: Studies of the international conference on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Ödön Lechner’s
death, eds Zsombor Jékely, Zsuzsa Margittai, and Klára Szegzárdy-Csengery (Budapest: Museum of
Applied Arts, 2015), 143–152.
Iván Szántó, ‘Lajta’s Collection of Oriental Ceramics,’ in Lajta Béla Virtuális Archívum, ed. Tamás Csáki(Budapest: Budapest Főváros Levéltára, 2011).
Anonymous, A Közel- és Középkelet, 26.
Anonymous, A Közel- és Középkelet, 6.
About the establishement of an Iranian emigrant group in Hungary in 1953, see HU – MNL – OL – M– KS 276-98 in the the Hungarian National Archives.
Géza Fehéravári [sic], ‘Islamic Applied Arts Exhibition in Budapest.’ Islamic Review, October 1955:
16–20. I was unable to trace Fehérvári’s other short report, published in Arabic in Damascus.
For an overview of the Woking Mission, see Gerdien Jonker, The Ahmadiyya Quest for Religious Progress: Missionizing Europe 1900–1965 (Leiden: Brill, 2016); Gerdien Jonker, ‘A Laboratory of Modernity:
The Ahmadiyya Mission in Interwar Europe,’ Journal of Muslims in Europe 3 (2014): 1–25.

Iván Szántó

53.
54.
55.
56.

57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.

68.
69.
70.
71.

Mestyan, ‘Materials for a History of Hungarian Academic Orientalism,’ 21.
Review of Religions (vol. 20, no. 7, 1921), 281.
Jonker, ‘A Laboratory of Modernity,’ 1–25.
Other regional authors included Polish emigrants Stanisław Kościałkowski and Aslan Bohdanowicz,
as well as Vienna-based Yugoslav Muslim emigré scholar Isma’il Balic whose article ‘Traces of Islamin Hungary – Gulbaba’s Mausoleum in Budapest’ (1950), about a favourite topic of Germanus, appears
like a preamble to writings by the latter which would start in the following year. The first article fromthe Soviet Union was E. A. Belaiev, ‘Russian Orientalists and Russian Communists on Islam,’ Islamic
Review, October 1954: 12–14.
For the articles by Germanus see Appendix. While Germanus stopped sending his regular notes following the revolution of 1956, he appears among the contributors in Safa A. Khulusi, ed., Islam, Our Choice(Wembly: Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust, 1961).
Zaky M. Hasan, ‘The Lawfulness of Painting in Islam,’ Islamic Review, June 1953: 29; David Storm Rice,‘The Fermo Chasuble of the Archbishop of Cantebury, St. Thomas Becket,’ Islamic Review, September 1966: 19–22.
Germanus’ report survives among the embassy papers (HU – MNL – OL – XIX – J 11a-4/0028-1955. V.
21). The visit has been linked with a Czechoslovak arms deal in Mestyan, ‘“I Have To Disguise Myself ”,’
233.
Fehérvári, Három nemzet szolgálatában, 86–87.
Győző Gerő, ‘Neuere Angaben zur Geschichte der türkischen Architektur in Ungarn: Die Malkotsch
Bey Dschami in Siklós,’ Materiala Turcica, vols. 7–8 (1981–1982 [1983]): 191–216.
Péter Vukman, ‘Barátból ellenség – ellenségből barát (?): A magyar-jugoszláv párt- és államközi kapcsolatok (1945–1956),’ in Fejezetek a titói Jugoszlávia korai korszakából, eds István Beszédes and Tibor
Molnár (Zenta: Zentai Történelmi Levéltár, 2016), 45–79.
László Gerő, A helyreállított Budai Vár (Budapest: Műszaki, 1980), 24.
Fehérvári, Három nemzet szolgálatában, 85.
Fehérvári, Három nemzet szolgálatában, 85.
Fehérvári, Három nemzet szolgálatában, 90–91.
Fehérvári, Három nemzet szolgálatában, 94–95. These events can be added to the most detailed documentary collection of the entwined crises of Suez and Hungary; see János Sáringer, ed., A szuezi válság és
Magyarország – 1956: Diplomáciai iratok az 1956-os magyar forradalom és szabadságharc, illetve a szuezi
válság történetéhez (Budapest: Veritas, 2016).
Fehérvári, Három nemzet szolgálatában, 105.
André Godard, Perzsa miniatúrák: reprodukciók (Budapest: Pátria Nyomda, 1957).
Basil Gray, and André Godard, Iran: Persian Miniatures: Imperial Library (New York: Graphic Society,1956).
Anonymous, ‘Megnyitották a perzsa miniatúrák kiállítását,’ Népszabadság, 31 July 1958: 7.

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Godard, André. Perzsa miniatúrák: reprodukciók. Budapest: Pátria Nyomda, 1957.
Göncöl, György. ‘Bandung és a békés együttlétezés elve.’ Társadalmi Szemle, no. 5 (1955): 85–97.
Gray, Basil, and André Godard. Iran: Persian Miniatures: Imperial Library. New York Graphic Society, 1956.
Hasan, Zaky M. ‘The Lawfulness of Painting in Islam.’ Islamic Review, June 1953: 29.
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2016.
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Molnár. Zenta: Zentai Történelmi Levéltár, 2016, 45–79.

APPENDIX
Articles by Gyula Germanus in Islamic Review (1951–1956):‘Observations on the Arabic Alphabet.’ November 1951: 13–14.
‘Modern Sa‘udi Arabian Literature.’ November 1952: 31–33.
‘Arabic as a Language is Unique.’ July 1953: 16.
‘Muslim Geographers.’ July 1954: 9–11.
‘Napoleon and Islam.’ August 1955: 30–32.
‘Ibn Kathir on Husain Ibn Mansur al-Hallaj.’ October 1955: 14–16.
‘Aspects of Modern Arabic Literature.’ December 1955: 28–32.
‘Reflections on the Spirit of the Arabic Language.’ October 1956: 14–15.

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SOUTH ASIA IN
POST-WAR PRAGUELUBOR HÁJEK AND INDIAN MODERNIST ART*
Zdenka Klimtová

In 2021 the Asian Art Collection at the National Gallery in Prague (NGP) celebrated two anniversaries: seventy years had passed since the collection was
first established, and the same year also marked the centenary of the birth of its
founder, Lubor Hájek,1 who headed the collection from 1952 until his retirementin 1986.2 He also deserves credit for establishing Asian art studies as a disciplinein Czechoslovakia. Hájek’s professional interests and publications covered abroad spectrum of topics. Hájek studied Indology and comparative religion. He
also devoted considerable attention to Chinese and Japanese art, in connection
with the collection’s focus on East Asian art. As far as Indian art is concerned, in
1960–1962 Hájek published two monographs about Indian miniature painting.3
He also played a crucial role in introducing the work of Indian modernists inCzechoslovakia. In this paper, I will specifically concentrate on this area of his
activities to illustrate the ways the transregional exchange between South Asianmodernist artists and Czechoslovakia took place from the 1950s to the end of the
1970s. Not only Prague but also other larger cities, such as Brno and Bratislava,
hosted exhibitions of contemporary Indian artists during this period.
Hájek’s career began with the end of the war. Czech universities were closed
from 1939 to the end of the Second World War, so Hájek could not start studying
until 1945. In that same year, he also became a founding member and acting editor of the Nový Orient (New Orient) magazine published by the Oriental Institute,a publication that continues to be produced to this day. Twenty-five years later,
one of the other founders, Zdeněk Hrdlička (1919–1999), remembered: ‘Hájek
had the most experience and, in my opinion, gave the new magazine’s content a
refined and formally elegant structure’ (fig. 1).4
By the first half of the 1950s, the NGP, on its own or in collaboration withother specialists, had held exhibitions on Chinese art, on Japanese graphics, andone on Indian sculpture.5 The first large exhibition of modern and contemporary
Indian art in Prague and Bratislava was held in 1955 and 1956 respectively. These
were the first stops for a travelling exhibition organised by India’s National Academy of Art – the Lalit Kala Akademi – in cooperation with the Czechoslovak side,comprising the Ministry of Culture, the NGP, and the Union of Czechoslovak
Lubor Hájek and Indian Modernist Art

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Figure 1. Photograph of Lubor Hájek. Ca. the second half of the 1940s. Black-and-white photograph. Archiveof the National Gallery in Prague, Fonds: Lubor Hájek. Photograph © National Gallery in Prague 2023.

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Zdenka Klimtová

Fine Artists. The exhibition presented a substantial overview of twentieth-century
Indian painting, with the main focus placed on contemporary art. Hájek wrote
several articles about the exhibition, in which he also reflected on contemporary
trends and possible stylistic developments. For instance, in the conclusion of oneof these articles, he seemingly understood Indian art to be in a transitional phase:
The themes, techniques, opinions, and forms are still going off in all directions, like the legs of a new-born foal. However, we can see a guarantee of
future consolidation at this exhibition in that the vast majority of the artists
believe Indian traditions should be used as the principal measuring stickand the main guideline for direction, even though they have not yet decided
how to best approach it.6
The extent of Hájek’s interest in Indian art of the 1950s becomes clear from hisstatement predicting possible developments:
At this point, it would certainly be difficult to guess the direction that Indianart will take in the future, or which external influences it will accept andhow it will adapt them. Nonetheless, it is possible, as well as educational, to
explore the foundation laid by its national history and examine how today’s
Indian painter approaches this legacy.7
Hájek reflected on the same theme twenty-four years later during an exhibitionof Indian art held in 1979.
The dizzying pace of the travelling exhibition illustrates how exhibition operations functioned at the time. It was open for a mere thirteen days in Prague(6–18 December 1955) and then another fourteen days in Bratislava (22 December 1955–4 January 1956).8 The organisers had only four days to take down the
exhibition in Prague, transport it, and set it up again in Bratislava.
The title page of the catalogue for this travelling exhibition features drawings by
the Slovak graphic artist and illustrator Lubomír Kellenberger (1921–1971), which
he dedicated to Hájek in Bratislava (fig. 2).9 The artist’s practice as a caricaturist
cannot be denied: Hájek’s distinctive profile is portrayed on the left, while in theupper part, there is a depiction of a man who is probably František Komzala (1898–
1980), who at the time the exhibition was held, was the Czechoslovak ambassador
to India (1952–1956); he had previously been the ambassador to China.
The NGP purchased ten paintings from the exhibition. The protocol prepared by
the purchasing committee in 1956 states that after the exhibition had ended, paintings were selected for the NGP’s collection at the instigation of the Minister of Culture in a way that would ensure that ‘the best contemporary Indian artists, and also
schools, are represented in this collection, so that the Czechoslovak Republic would
have at least partial documentation of the state of contemporary Indian painting’.10
The protocol continued: ‘As this is a matter of importance for the cultural relations
Lubor Hájek and Indian Modernist Art

161

Figure 2. Title page of the catalogue for the travelling exhibition of Indian art, featuring drawings by
Lubomír Kellenberger, 1955/56. On the left is a portrait of Lubor Hájek. Archive of the National Gallery in
Prague, Fonds: Lubor Hájek. Photograph © National Gallery in Prague 2023.

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Figure 3. Evening by V. S. Gaitonde, probably
early 1950s. Tempera on paper, 56 × 43 cm.
National Gallery in Prague, inv. no. Vm 926.
Photograph © National Gallery in Prague(See plate 26, p. 263)

of both countries, the committee
unanimously agrees with the purchase for the asking price’. There isa handwritten comment added by
Hájek: ‘The department submits
photographs to the committee for
evaluation, because the exhibition
was a travelling one, and from
Czechoslovakia it travelled through
Hungary and Bulgaria and it is now
in the USSR, and it seems it will
later also be installed in Poland’.11 After the end of the exhibition tour, the first works
by contemporary Indian artists found their way into the NGP’s collections.
Of this acquisition, six paintings have been preserved in the NGP’s collection(fig. 3).12 Four of the ten purchased paintings were destroyed in 1969 when the
Asian Art Collection was caught in a fire at the château in Benešov nad Ploučnicí,
where they were stored or temporarily exhibited at the time. All that remainsof these early works by important Indian modernist artists are index cards withblack-and-white photographs in the documentation.13
Another source of the acquisitions for the NGP’s collections is associated withthe study stays of Indian artists. One of the first such stays of an Indian modernist
artist was that of Maqbool Fida Husain (1915–2011) in 1956. Husain came toCzechoslovakia at the invitation of the Ministry of Education and Culture, andhe held an exhibition of his paintings and drawings at the Mánes Exhibition Hallin Prague. Although none of his works were acquired for the state’s collections
at that time, the artist established personal contacts that lasted for many decades. Husain returned to Prague often.14 For instance, he designed a mural for Air
India’s Prague office, which was unfortunately removed in the 1960s.
The sculptor and graphic artist Ajit Chakravarti (1930–2005) studied at the
Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague between 1957 and 1961, withJan Kavan. In 1961 he exhibited his work in Prague’s Old Town Hall. Hájek wrote
the text for the exhibition catalogue. One of the things we learn from this text is that
Hájek visited various art schools and followed the work of artists from Asian countries who were studying in Prague at that time.15 Four prints and two sculptures
were purchased for the NGP from Chakravarti’s exhibition.16 A sculptural portraitof Hájek by Chakravarti, which had been recorded in the exhibition catalogue andidentified as a work by Chakravarti, was added to the collection in 2021.17
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163

Bishamber Khanna (also born in 1930) studied graphic art techniques at the
Prague Academy of Fine Arts from 1958 with Vladimír Pukl and Vladimír Silovský.
He presented his work at an extensive exhibition held in Hollar Hall in 1960. This
exhibition included paintings and drawings, but the greatest share comprised
prints. While in Prague Khanna not only studied at the academy’s studios but also
attended typographic and reproduction institutions, where he learned printing andreproduction techniques.18 The NGP purchased four of his graphic prints.19
As a rule, all exhibitions held outside the state galleries were organised andendorsed by the Union of Czechoslovak Fine Artists, which was the officialorganisation that united the members of individual artistic groups and significantly intervened in exhibition operations after 1948.
When Biren De (1926–2011) arrived for his study stay in 1975, he was an
acknowledged artist who had already achieved a degree of international recognition. His paintings are labelled under the rubric known as neo-tantra, although
he personally distanced himself from finding inspiration in tantric art. As he saysin an interview with S. A. Krishnan in 1971:
It is easy to confuse my paintings with some form of tantra art. I am not acult painter, and my work is not the result of any esoteric practice. I am notcertainly a tantric in this sense. But if you will agree that the essential objective of tantra is the discovery of the true nature of things, of self-realisationand identification of oneself with nature wholly, I am a tantric and so areyou, and anybody.20
The NGP acquired three paintings Biren De made during his time in Prague.21
Another Indian artist whose work the Czechoslovak public had the opportunity to become acquainted with was Bhattacharya Chittaprosad (1915–1978).
In 1963 his first retrospective exhibition of graphic art took place in Prague, andin the following year, the NGP purchased thirty-eight of his linocuts and woodcuts.22 The artist lived in modest conditions in Bombay and did not travel abroad.
Both the exhibition and the acquisitions came about thanks to the long-time
contacts that existed between the artist and his Czech friends, although Hájek
was less involved in this case. An article by Simone Wille on the topic of Chittaprosad’s prints at the NGP within the context of Indo-Czech cultural relations in
the post-war era was published in 2020 in the Bulletin of the National Gallery in
Prague.23 The article revisits the circumstances that were decisive for the promotion of Chittaprosad’s art in Czechoslovakia starting in the 1950s. It describes thepaths that cultural exchange followed as well as the priorities that existed at thattime. The article is a follow-up to the extensive study that Simone Wille publishedin Stedelijk Studies in 2019.24
Although Chittaprosad distanced himself from the Communist Party of India
in 1948, he continued to hold leftist convictions. This was the same year the Communists gained control of Czechoslovakia, a development reflected in the official
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Figure 4. Peace to All Children Around theWorld by Bhattacharya Chittaprosad, 1952.
Print from the series Without Fairy-Tales,linocut on paper, 30.5 × 29.6 cm. National
Gallery in Prague, inv. no. Vm 2481.
Photograph © National Gallery in Prague
2023. (See plate 27, p. 264)

stance to art and its ideologisation
as well as in the selection of ‘suitable’ foreign artists. The themes
found in Chittaprosad’s art met therequirements: exploitation, oppression, and later also themes thatgravitated towards folk art (fig. 4).
His friendship with the Indologist Miloslav Krása (1920–2004), who had beeninterested in Chittaprosad’s art at least since the early 1950s, played an importantrole in the promotion of his work in Czechoslovakia. Starting in 1957, Chittaprosad
became a frequent contributor to the previously mentioned Nový Orient monthly andits English counterpart – the New Orient Bimonthly, which was published only from1960 to 1968. Krása also accompanied the director Pavel Hobl when he travelled to
India in 1972 and shot his short film Confession, a filmic portrait about the artist, madein the artist’s small and modest room in a Bombay suburb. The film subsequently
received the World Peace Council Award at the International Documentary Film Festival in Leipzig, East Germany. Following Chittaprosad’s death, three exhibitions were
speedily organised between 1978 and 1981 in Prague, Litoměřice, and Brno. In 1986
the NGP lent a series of its prints for an exhibition held at the New Heritage Gallery
in New Delhi.25 Once again, it was Miloslav Krása who compiled documentation toaccompany Chittaprosad’s work, and this file was donated to the NGP.
Hájek and Krása also joined forces for another exhibition organised by theUnion of Czechoslovak Fine Artists, this time at the U Řečických Gallery in 1967.
Sixteen of Husain’s paintings and eight drawings by Ram Kumar were shown. Nine
years later, related to another of Husain’s exhibitions in Prague, Hájek bemoaned
in his notes the fact that he should have tried harder to obtain one of the artist’s
paintings of horses for the NGP’s collections.26 Yet Hájek made up for this loss bypurchasing a sketchbook and a large-scale painting which Husain created live, infront of the Prague audience which attended his exhibition opening at Jaroslav
Fragner Gallery in 1976 (fig. 5).27 According to the press, this exhibition travelledfrom Prague to Paris and then on to Boston.28 Nine years later, in 1985, Husain
returned to Prague once more. This time it was a private trip, and he visited Hájek
at his home as well as in his office at the château in Zbraslav on the outskirts of
Prague. A set of amateur photographs from Husain’s trip has been preserved in
the documentation of the NGP’s Collection of Asian Art.
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165

Figure 5. Opening of M. F. Husain’s exhibition, Prague, Jaroslav Fragner Gallery. 22 June 1976. Black-andwhite photograph. Archive of the National Gallery in Prague, Fonds: Documentation of the Collection of
Asian Art. Photograph © National Gallery in Prague 2023.

The exhibition Modern Indian Art, held in 1979, was in some ways similar tothe large exhibition of Indian art that took place in 1955/56. It was also developed
as a travelling show, and it took place on the premises of the NGP, which, together
with the Ministry of Culture, helped organise it on the Czechoslovak side. On
the Indian side, it was prepared by the National Gallery of Modern Art in New
Delhi, and a hundred of the displayed works were from the National Gallery’s
collections.29 The majority consisted of new acquisitions. The presented artists
included those whose works the NGP had acquired from the previously mentioned exhibition (1955–1956).
In a typed text included with the documentation from the 1979 exhibition,
possibly an opening speech or supporting material for a lecture, Hájek reminisced (here we are making an allowance for a brief excerpt from an unpublishedtext taken out of context):
Probably no one ever reproached Rabindranath Tagore of his cosmopolitanism. However, in 1955 this objection was voiced at press conferences inPrague and Bratislava about the painters who followed in his footsteps whenthe Lalit Kala Akademi first brought a collection of contemporary Indian art
to our country. I remember how one of the [exhibition] superintendents, thepainter Gade, passionately opposed the demand that an artwork be definedby national cultural tradition. He demanded the right to express himself asa free person in a free world.30
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Further on in the text, Hájek wrote: ‘Several years ago I was sitting in his studio,
and [Gade and I] talked about art long into the night’. Hájek recalled how, at thattime, he realised that Gade’s paintings, which seemed to be so cosmopolitan to
critics, are predominantly imbued with the unmistakable fluctuating rhythm of
the Indian villages from which the artist came.
The fact that works by Indian artists were purchased in Prague with state support and that personal relationships existed with the artists is to the credit of two
particular individuals – Lubor Hájek and Miloslav Krása. From the 1950s to the1970s, the two managed to regularly show Indian modern art in Czechoslovakia.
They were connected through their common beginnings at the magazine NovýOrient and then successfully coordinated their common interest in Indian art andculture. Krása remembered his colleague with appreciation and respect in a textthat reflected on Hájek’s contribution:
I don’t know how it was with artists from other countries, but as far as the
Indian painters and sculptors who knew Lubor Hájek are concerned, hemade a great impression on them. It was as if only Hoffmeister and Hájek
existed in our country for them – and then nothing for a long time. He
became the personification of the European avant-garde for them in the
discovery of Indian modern art. He brought Ram Kumar, Maqbool Fida
Husain, Ajit Chakravarti, and Krishan [sic] Khanna to the attention of theWestern public in Prague. I had personal experience with him in the collective at the biennials in Delhi and know what I am talking about. And who
can forget the opening of Husain’s exhibition at Fragner Gallery at which, at
the initiative of the artist, Hájek, and Kotalík,31 the largest Indian painting
in the collections of our National Gallery in Prague came to life in front of
the eyes of all those present.32
While Hájek’s and Krása’s legacies and the role they played in the framework ofcultural politics are well documented, the role that Indian modernist art holds
within the Collection of Asian Art at the NGP still needs to be explored.

Lubor Hájek and Indian Modernist Art167

NOTES
*

30.
31.
32.

This article was supported by a NGP’s Grant for the Long-Term Conceptual Development of a Research
Organisation of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.
Lubor Hájek (5 May 1921, Nové Strašecí–2 March 2000, Prague).
For detailed information about Lubor Hájek, see also Markéta Hánová’s contribution in this volume.
Lubor Hájek, Indian Miniatures of the Moghul School (London and Prague: Spring Books, 1960); Lubor
Hájek, Indische Miniaturen der lokalen Schulen (Prague: Artia, 1961). The monographs were publishedin several languages between 1960 and 1962.
‘Nový Orient před 25 lety. Beseda se zakládajícími členy redakce NO: dr. Luborem Hájkem, CSc., dr.
Zdeňkem Hrdličkou a dr. Miloslavem Krásou’ [The New Orient 25 Years Ago. A Get-Together with theFounding Members of the NO: Dr Lubor Hájek, Dr Zdeněk Hrdlička, and Dr Miloslav Krása], NovýOrient [New Orient], no. 5 (1970): 130–131.
Michaela Pejčochová, Sto let jednoho stromu [One Hundred Years of a Single Tree]. (Brno: Books &Pipes, 2021), pp. 201–202.
Lubor Hájek, ‘Výstava indického umění’ [Indian Art Exhibition], Výtvarná práce [Creative Work],
no. 24 (1955): 12. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are by the publishing department of the NGP.
Lubor Hájek, ‘K výstavě indického umění’ [On the Exhibition of Indian Art], Nový Orient [New Orient],
no. 8 (1956): 26–27.
Exhibition documentation, Collection of Asian Art, National Gallery in Prague.
Indian Art Exhibition, Visiting Czechoslovakia Hungary Rumania Bulgaria 1955–1956 (n.p.: Lalit Kala
Akademi [sic], 1955) (exh. cat.).
Indian Art Exhibition.
Protocol no. 3. Meeting of the Purchasing Committee for Oriental Art, 9 June 1956, documentation of
the NGP Collection of Asian Art.
Badri Narayan, Mother and Child, watercolour on paper, 52 × 42 cm, inv. no. Vm 918; D. G. Kulkarni,
Goddess of the Fields, watercolour on paper, 58 × 78 cm, inv. no. Vm 919; K. Sreenivasulu, On A Rural
Cart, tempera on paper, 61 × 75 cm, inv. no. Vm 923; S. S. Anandkar, Glimmers in the Dark, tempera on
paper, 35.5 × 43 cm, inv. no. Vm 924; V. P. Trivedi, Labourers, watercolour on paper, 24.5 × 44 cm, inv.
no. Vm 925; V. S. Gaitonde, Evening, tempera on paper, 50 × 43 cm, inv. no. Vm 926.
B. C. Sanyal, Villager, oil on canvas, 75 × 60 cm, inv. no. Vm 917; H. A. Gade, Dinner in the Fields, oil oncanvas, 55.5 × 76 cm, inv. no. Vm 920; Jamini Roy, Bengali Woman, tempera on paper, 73 × 34 cm, inv.
no. Vm 921; K. K. Hebbar, Villager, oil on canvas, 65 × 72 cm, inv. no. Vm 922.
For more about Husain’s Prague connection, see Simone Wille’s contribution in this volume.
Lubor Hájek, Ajit Chakravarti (Prague: n.p., 1961), n.p. (exh. cat.).
Inv. nos. Vm 1813, Vm 1814, Vm 1815, Vm 1816, Vp 892, and Vp 893.
Ajit Chakravarti, Sculptural portrait of Lubor Hájek, 1960, plaster, h. 30 cm, inv. no. Vp 4142.
František Dvořák, Bishamber Khanna (Prague: SČVU, 1960), n.p. (exh. cat.).
Inv. nos. Vm 1510, Vm 1511, Vm 1512, and Vm 1513.
S. A. Krishnan. ‘The Light that Shines’. In Biren De, a journey … as seen by 5 contemporaries. n.p.: n.p.,[197-?].
Biren De, PRAGUE – May – June 1975, oil on canvas, 70.5 × 70.5 cm, inv. no. Vm 3678; Biren De,
PRAGUE – June – August 1975, oil on canvas, 125 × 82.5 cm, inv. no. Vm 3679; Biren De, Prague –May 1975, oil on canvas, 70.2 × 50.1 cm, inv. no. Vm 3680.
Inv. nos. Vm 2458 – Vm 2495.
Simone Wille, ‘Chittaprosad´s Linocut Prints at the National Gallery in Prague: Understanding IndoCzech Cultural Relations in the Postwar Era’, Bulletin of the National Gallery in Prague XXX (2020): 6–21.
Simone Wille, ‘A Transnational Socialist Solidarity: Chittaprosad´s Prague Connection’, Stedelijk Studies
9 (2019).
Amit Mukhopadhyay, ‘Chittaprasad: Humanist and Patriot’, Art Heritage: Season – 1985–86, no. 5(1985–1986): 74–83.
Lubor Hájek’s handwritten comments, documentation of the NGP Collection of Asian Art.
For details about this exhibition, see Simone Wille’s article in this volume.
Mladá Fronta, 23 June 1976.
Lakshmi P. Sihari, ed., Moderní indické umění [Modern Indian Art] (Prague: National Gallery, 1979),(exh. cat.).
Typed text, documentation for the exhibition Modern Indian Art, 1979, NGP Collection of Asian Art.
Jiří Kotalík (1920–1996), art historian, director of the NGP from 1967 to 1990.
https://dharmagaia.cz/kniha/bambusy/ (accessed 24 January 2022).

168

Zdenka Klimtová

1.
2.
3.
4.

5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.

BIBLIOGRAPHYDvořák, František. Bishamber Khanna. Prague: SČVU, 1960. Exhibition catalogue.
Hájek, Lubor. Ajit Chakravarti. Prague: n.p., 1961. Exhibition catalogue.
Hájek, Lubor. Indian Miniatures of the Moghul School. London and Prague: Spring Books, 1960.
Hájek, Lubor. Indische Miniaturen der lokalen Schulen. Prague: Artia, 1961.
Hájek, Lubor. ‘K výstavě indického umění’ [On the Exhibition of Indian Art]. Nový Orient [New Orient], no. 8(1956): 26–27.
Hájek, Lubor. ‘Výstava indického umění’ [Indian Art Exhibition]. Výtvarná práce [Creative Work], no. 24(1955): 12.
Indian Art Exhibition, Visiting Czechoslovakia Hungary Romania Bulgaria 1955–1956. n.p.: Lalit Kala Akademi[sic], 1955. Exhibition catalogue.
Krishnan, S. A. ‘The Light that Shines’. In Biren De, a journey … as seen by 5 contemporaries. n.p.: n.p., [197-?].
Mukhopadhyay, Amit. ‘Chittaprasad: Humanist and Patriot’. Art Heritage: Season – 1985–86, no. 5 (1985–1986):
74–83.
‘Nový Orient před 25 lety. Beseda se zakládajícími členy redakce NO: dr. Luborem Hájkem, CSc., dr. Zdeňkem
Hrdličkou a dr. Miloslavem Krásou’ [The New Orient 25 Years Ago. A Get-Together with the Founding
Members of the NO: Dr Lubor Hájek, Dr Zdeněk Hrdlička, and Dr Miloslav Krása]. Nový Orient [NewOrient], no. 5 (1970): 129–131.
Pejčochová, Michaela. Sto let jednoho stromu [One Hundred Years of a Single Tree]. Brno: Books & Pipes, 2021.
Sihari, Lakshmi P., ed. Moderní indické umění [Modern Indian Art]. Prague: National Gallery, 1979. Exhibition
catalogue.
Wille, Simone. ‘Chittaprosad’s Linocut Prints at the National Gallery in Prague: Understanding Indo-Czech
Cultural Relations in the Postwar Era’. Bulletin of the National Gallery in Prague XXX (2020): 6–21.
Wille, Simone. ‘A Transnational Socialist Solidarity: Chittaprosad’s Prague Connection’. Stedelijk Studies 9(2019). https://doi.org/10.54533/StedStud.vol009.art11.

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169

M. F. HUSAIN’S WORK IN THE COLLECTION
OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY IN PRAGUE:CONNECTING EAST AND WEST*
Simone Wille

The Indian artist Maqbool Fida Husain (1915–2011) is considered to be India’s
most important postcolonial modernist artist. He is intrinsically linked with India’s
Nehruvian nation-building project and is said to have given form to early postcolonial modernist art in the country. In terms of art history, Husain has been
widely researched. There is hardly an account of Indian modernism without due
acknowledgement of his contribution.1 In all of these narratives, it is undisputedthat Husain gave form to artistic modernism in post-partition India. From early on
in his career, he had the opportunity to travel extensively and internationally, andthese journeys can be seen as directly related to the global post-war environment.
Along with a general shift in power, decolonisation made new cultural and politicalconnections and alliances possible in every direction. As a nationally and internationally celebrated artist, Husain received invitations to exhibit in many countries.

TRAVEL ABROAD AND FIRST CONTACTS WITH PRAGUE
Husain’s first journey outside India took him to Beijing, where he travelled with
Indian delegates to the 1952 Asia-Pacific Peace Conference. In 1953 he undertook
trips to Egypt and Europe and, thereafter, to many more places. In 1956 he wasinvited by the Czechoslovak Cultural Ministry to exhibit his works at Prague’s
Mánes Exhibition Hall, and in the following years, he maintained close ties with
Prague and some Praguers, and he returned regularly for different exhibition formats. In 1957 he was commissioned to paint a mural for Air India’s Prague office
which, however, no longer exists.2
In 1976 he travelled across Czechoslovakia and documented this journey inthe form of an artist’s book or diary, with twenty-three original drawings. Thesedrawings form part of the collection of the National Gallery in Prague (NGP).
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171

The narrative of some of these drawings, together with the memory of a live drawing performance by Husain at Prague’s Fragner Gallery in 1976, were eventually
repurposed in his second feature film, Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities, produced
in 2004, where Prague is featured as one of the three cities. The works in the
Prague collection and the circumstances of their making are not well known. This
article will therefore introduce Husain’s Prague works and examine their placein the nationally and internationally celebrated artist’s oeuvre, as well as within
the collection of the NGP. Husain’s multifaceted practice, which included painting, sculpture, toy-making, performance, and film, has been said to have bridged‘boundaries of cultural practices associated with East and West’.3 Following art
historian Sonal Khullar’s assessment of Husain’s ‘cosmopolitan orientations andworld historical ambitions of the artist’s work’,4 I will also examine to what extent
Husain’s frequent returns to Prague contributed to the artist’s understanding of
East and West. Given Husain’s personal contacts and institutional connections
with Prague – and the political environment of the Cold War, which enabled andfacilitated these connections – the question arises as to how we can understandthem as constitutive of the artist’s creative navigations between the political andcultural environment, both nationally and internationally.

EARLY INTERNATIONAL EXPOSURE
When Husain travelled as an Indian delegate to the 1952 Asia-Pacific Peace Conference in Beijing, he was already a celebrated artist in India. He was part of thefamous but short-lived Progressive Artists Group, a six-member avant-gardegroup formed in Bombay in the wake of India’s independence in 1947.5 These
artists rejected the academicism practised at the J.J. School of Art,6 which was alsofavoured by the Bombay Art Society. They developed a formal artistic language
which employed not only Indian traditional art but also Expressionism and Cubism. After visiting the exhibition Masterpieces of Indian Art at the Government
House in Delhi in 1948 – a major exhibition surveying five thousand years ofIndian art and culture that travelled from London to New Delhi, accompanying thetransfer of power, as it were, from the empire to the nation state – Husain turned
to local motifs and art, studying popular and folk art and early Indian sculpture,
which he often reduced to their linear and structural minimum.7 Through hisinternational travels, however, Husain was exposed to a wide range of post-war
artistic developments, and not all these impressions have been thoroughly studied.8 Art historian Susan Bean has referred to Husain’s meeting with the artists
Qi Baishi (1864–1957) and Xu Beihong (1895–1953) during his trip to China in
1952. According to Bean, Husain was impressed by the calligraphic quality ofthese artists’ brushstrokes, which she sees as impacting on his works to come. She
draws connections between the Chinese artists’ famous horse drawings and thoseof Husain.9 At the peace conference in Beijing, it is likely that Husain saw a repro172

Simone Willeduction of Diego Rivera’s famous Nightmare of War, Dream of Peace (Pesadilla De
Guerra, Sueño De Paz) from 1952, which was displayed on the wall of the meetinghall opposite Picasso’s Dove of Peace from 1949.10 Even if he was ‘boldly dismissiveof those who followed the socialist realism of the Soviet Union’,11 he may well haveenjoyed the simple graphic line drawing of Picasso’s work. The point here is not somuch to judge these works as having an influence on the artist, but rather to drawa larger picture of what he was exposed to, as a result of which one can assess how
he positioned himself in relation to these experiences.
As an artist who enjoyed immense international exposure, Husain was wellaware of the cultural diplomacy that facilitated these journeys. Therefore, manyof the invitations he received had less to do with a genuine interest in modern
Indian art, but were rather intended to accompany political and diplomatic networking efforts. This becomes clear from Husain’s Rockefeller Fellowship in 1959.
He left the United States after six days with a sense of disappointment, findingthat his work as an artist within the programme, which was designed to promote friendship between India and the United States in the climate of the Cold
War, was met with little interest.12 In addition to Husain’s exhibitions and staysin Prague, this article is therefore also concerned with examining the nature of
the artist’s relationship with this city, where a close circle of friends – a mix ofprivate individuals, Indologists, and art enthusiasts – followed and nurtured his
international career and participated in it in a non-hierarchical way. In contrast
to his experience with the Rockefeller Fellowship, in Prague, it seems, he wascelebrated as a modernist artist, both from India and internationally, on the basisthat his art demonstrated a commitment to his nation but was, at the same time,transnational and transregional in character.

HUSAIN’S CONNECTION WITH PRAGUE
Husain’s first trip to Prague in 1956 was connected to an invitation by the Czechoslovak Ministry of Education and Culture to hold a solo exhibition at Prague’s
Mánes Exhibition Hall, the requirement being that the invited artist was to carryout a so-called study tour of the country. The resulting studies, mainly of drawings and sketches of Prague and its surroundings, were then exhibited together
with a series of paintings that he had brought with him for the occasion. Archival
images from his first exhibition in Prague show a young and shy Husain in asuit and tie, trying to fit in. In pictures from later stays, he is seen as much more
confident, dressed in Indian clothes and wearing a beard, often barefoot, whichbecame his trademark. His engagement with the culturally rich city of Prague wasstimulated, not least, by some of his personal contacts. The Czech Indologists andcultural networkers Miloslav Krása and Lubor Hájek were both instrumental innurturing the city’s as well as the personal connection with Husain. But perhaps
more important was Husain’s attraction to Marie Žurková, a young interpreter
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173

Figure 1. Cover of Praha by M. F. Husain. June 1976. Ink-on-paper drawing, 23 × 15.5 cm. National Gallery in
Prague. Photograph © National Gallery in Prague 2023.

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Simone Wille

from Prague, with whom he fell madly in love. The Indian painter met Marie atthe opening of his 1956 exhibition, gave her a collection of his paintings as a gift,
returned to Prague regularly over the following years, and even proposed marriage to her.13 According to author Khalid Mohamed, Marie was the ‘impossible’
love of Husain’s life, and the two are said to have shared an enthusiasm for Eastern and Western writers and philosophers as well as for music.14 Both Marie andreferences to her appear in drawings and writings from that period.15 However,Marie declined Husain’s marriage proposal on the grounds that it would be culturally difficult for her to live in India as his second wife. She eventually marriedanother man and moved to Australia.
Husain continued to return to Prague and, while he reminisced about Marie,
he nurtured his friendships with Krása and Hájek. Both of them were instrumental in facilitating his Prague trips and were active in maintaining good, personalconnections with the Indian artist over the years. Both men are thus visuallyacknowledged in the series of twenty-three drawings he made in 1976. Krása evenappears as a character in Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities, and Hájek in fact, playeda leading role in purchasing Husain’s work for the Collection of Asian Art at the
NGP, even lamenting that he should have made more effort to purchase further
works by the artist for the collection.16
The twenty-three drawings that the artist created in 1976 were – not unlike
the 1956 drawings – produced on a study tour through Czechoslovakia. They
document places and people which Husain visited. In terms of style and content,
however, they are much more attentive to detail, which can perhaps be attributed
to Husain’s familiarity with and extensive knowledge of the country, its capitalcity, and its culture and people. These ink drawings were executed on paper andstill remain in a Grumbacher sketchbook.
The small format of twenty-three by fifteen and a half centimetres gives thedrawings an intimate character. Some of them are vertically oriented, others horizontally. From the title page (fig. 1) onwards, followed by pages Praha 1 to 18
and Bratislava 1 to 4, the series is marked by movement and theatricality, and it
is presented almost as a storyboard for a film. On the cover page, we see a finely
drawn hand with seven fingers holding two pencils, drawing lines on the palmof another hand. This handwritten portrayal references the artist’s perception of
Prague as a musical city, and this impression runs through the whole series, both
iconographically and stylistically. The triangular lines of the drawing hand (fig. 1)
recur, for example, at some point framing the orchestra in Praha 17 as arches orforming a superstructure over the church in Praha 18. The artist has captured
a number of recognisable sites, such as the National Theatre in Praha 1 (fig. 2),
the Charles Bridge in Praha 3 (fig. 3), the Capuchin monastery in the centre of
Praha 5 (fig. 4), and the old town quarter Nový Svět adjoining it.17

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Figure 2. Praha 1 by M. F. Husain. 1976. Ink-on-paper drawing, 23 × 15.5 cm. National Gallery in Prague.
Photograph © National Gallery in Prague 2023.

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Simone Wille

Figure 3. Praha 3 by M. F. Husain. 1976. Ink-on-paper drawing, 23 × 15.5 cm. National Gallery in Prague.
Photograph © National Gallery in Prague 2023.

The scenes and motifs in these works have been ‘collaged’ and composed sothat we see, for instance, at the far end of Charles Bridge (fig. 3), an allegory of the
Vltava River, a popular sculpture in Prague, which is located at Mariánské placeat about ten minutes’ walking distance from the bridge. Personal and emotional
associations can be made with the wedding ceremony in Praha 5 (fig. 4), allowing
us to draw a connection to Husain’s marriage proposal to Marie. His biographer,
Khalid Mohamed, noted that, after having proposed to Marie, the artist boughta wedding dress in London and a Volkswagen car in Germany, both of which hethen delivered to the doorstep of the convent in Prague, where Marie was living.18
The artist depicts these details and this period of his life in Praha 5 (fig. 4), where
we see a church complex framed by a wall. A larger-than-life female figure leansover the wall and looks down at a car parked in the passage partly inside andpartly outside the wall. Opposite this scene sits a sorrowful male figure at the bottom of the church steps as a happy bride and groom emerge from the church. This
scenario is complemented by a winged figure, some clouds and a crescent moonthat has slipped to the lower edge of the picture, proverbially referring to this episode in the artist’s life as a disappointment. But Husain moves on and documents
his close friend Krása and his family in Praha 8, and the fact that he dedicates one
drawing to the Czech painter Jaroslav Hněvkovský in Praha 6, by reproducing adetail of this artist’s oil painting of Rabindranath Tagore in Santiniketan, signalsthat he was well informed about this Czech artist, who had lived and worked in
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Figure 4. Praha 5 by M. F. Husain. 1976. Ink-on-paper drawing, 23 × 15.5 cm. National Gallery in Prague.
Photograph © National Gallery in Prague 2023.

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India for several years. In Praha 6, with Žebrák written in the upper left of thepainting, Husain even refers to the fact that he visited Hněvkovský’s home town
on his tour.
The way Husain treats historical templates and local impressions in thesedrawings is consistent with his approach to similar models from the South Asian
context.19 According to anthropologist Karin Zitzewitz, the artist was thereby able
to identify ‘formal strategies that he considered to be essentially Indian’, which,she continues, ‘came to be recognized as his own modern, individual style’.20 The
formal process of adaptation that the artist continues to undertake in a process oftransformation in the Prague drawings is here seen less as cultural essentialism
and more as resistance to it. Take the work Bratislava 1. (fig. 5). Here we see patterns that Husain may well have noticed in the rural area in Čičmany in today’s
Slovakia, famous for its log houses with white ornamentation.
The artist has applied these folkloristic symbols to the couple’s clothing, partly
true to the original and partly in a modified form. They thus appear like formulas,a strategy he had already used in earlier works. Here, I think, for example, of
his iconic work Between the Spider and the Lamp from 1956, where he placed arandom selection of Devanagari alphabets in the upper part of the picture, whichwere intended to be more symbolic than to actually be deciphered.21
When we revisit Praha 3 (fig. 3), we are attracted by the simplified group of
sculptures on Charles Bridge, which the artist has freed from their cultural-religious affiliation. Husain thus transforms these templates and, in the process,adapts and deploys them according to his own vision and rules by ‘transfiguring
them on to paper’.22 The artist’s transformative strategy to arrive at a general understanding of formal cultural properties can perhaps best be described as a manifestation of a transculturality, where relationships between cultures are exploredand one is not privileged over the other.23 In Husain’s staging, these sculptures arereminiscent of a theatrical act and draw a connection with the musical theme that
he attests to this cycle of drawings in the prelude. A certain degree of theatricality
is also evident in the performance of his live drawing, which he enacted for an
exhibition at the Fragner Gallery in Prague during the same trip and where thedrawings and a set of other works were also exhibited.24 Alena Vosečková, who
attended the opening and reported about it in the journal Nový Orient, noticed
that Husain’s unexpected act of painting directly in front of the Prague audience
was only possible in such a casual way because he was so familiar with and athome in the city.25 Vosečková described in detail how, after the official speeches,
Husain took off his shoes, approached the large, empty canvas that had alreadystirred curiosity among the audience and began to paint, while Hájek, simultaneously and informally, spoke about the artist’s life from his personally collected
memories.26 The theme of the work that developed in front of the audience wasrelated to the Mahabharata epic, on which Husain had begun to work intensively
since the late 1960s. Vosečková then elaborated on what unfolded in front of theaudience in Prague. She emphasised that the artist moved in a ‘pantomime-like,M. F. Husain’s Work in the Collection of the National Gallery in Prague

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Figure 5. Bratislava 1 by M. F. Husain. 1976. Ink-on-paper drawing, 23 × 15.5 cm. National Gallery in Prague.
Photograph © National Gallery in Prague 2023.

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Simone Willeperformative act’ in front of the huge white canvas and that, without much effort,
an image emerged.27 Husain actively began to paint in front of audiences in India
in 1968, emphasising the process along with the act of doing, or ‘situating’, theartwork, as suggested by Khullar, ‘within the community of viewers’.28 This art
historian thereby argues against claims that view the artist’s performative work as
his awareness of international developments and his ‘talent for showmanship’.29
A point that needs to be kept in mind here is that Husain’s early experience asa billboard painter and toy designer in 1940s Bombay meant that he was accustomed to painting and designing, not in seclusion, but surrounded by others. I
agree with Khullar, who views the achievements of Husain’s performative strategies in their capacity to translate not only ‘between media’ but also ‘betweensites’, which includes ‘categories of East and West’.30 Husain’s performance at the
Fragner Gallery was thus an act to include his Prague viewers and to make them
part of his viewership, by incorporating them into an audience that stretched overthe seven continents. The ‘quivering seven fingers’ to which he refers on the title
page of the Prague drawings (fig. 1) can therefore be interpreted as a statement
about the seven continents or about the ‘dialogue between the seven points’ thathe poetically describes in the prologue to a volume that was published in New
York in 1971.31 In this publication the seven points were listed by the artist as
follows: ‘Kyoto, Mahabalipuram, Samarkand, Palermo, Provence, Liverpool andAlaska’,32 running symbolically from East to West. This confirms that, through hispractice with different media and in different locations, Husain was interested inconnecting rather than dividing. Likewise he was perceived by his supporters in
Prague as a link to a world that was seen as allied by the official governments ofIndia and Czechoslovakia but also to the world that lay outside that alliance. But
above all, and this was underlined by Hájek, who accompanied the artist’s painting performance with personal words, Husain developed long-term friendships
with Prague inhabitants, who established a firm understanding of and a connection to his work over the years.
The Prague painting measures one and a half by five metres and is titled The
Goddess Kunti in a Car Drawn by Ten Horses. It was acquired by the NGP, aswere the ink drawings that Husain did during his two-week sojourn. According
to Vosečková the artist also made a film about Prague during his journey throughCzechoslovakia. She stated that he saw it as a ‘kaleidoscope of images and drawings’,33 which, although untraceable, can be imagined to complement some of thetwenty-three drawings. When, in 2004, Husain produced his second feature film,
Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities, he may well have revisited his 1976 cinematic
diary as an inspiration for the Prague part of the film, or perhaps he remembered the twenty-three drawings that he had created while travelling through thecountry. Meenaxi is about a writer who finds his muse and overcomes his writer’s
block. The muse’s name is Meenaxi, and she performs several different roles. In
Hyderbad she is the mysterious perfumer; in Jaisalmer, the exotic woman fromthe desert; in Prague, the orphan Marie Žurková. Both Hyderabad and Jaisalmer
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181

are important cities for Husain in India, to which he returned frequently. Jaisalmer
was one of the locations where, in 1967, he shot his first experimental film inblack and white, Through the Eyes of a Painter. Prague thus joins a series of places
that were important to the artist as stages, settings, and production sites.
The Prague episode in Meenaxi moves between locations and scenes that had
already appeared in Husain’s drawings many years before. It opens with an aerialview of the historic city, zooming in on monuments, statues, churches, and the
Vltava River. What follows is the main character, Maria,34 stepping out of theentrance of a convent, pushing her bicycle35 to a riverside café where she works
and then to a theatre rehearsal, which she hastily leaves to hurry to Prague’s main
train station, Praha hlavní nádraží, in order to receive Kameshwar Mathur, whosename she holds up on a handwritten sheet of paper. After shots of moving andcrossing trains, and of people coming and going, Maria leaves the station disappointed, without having met her expected visitor. A chance encounter between
the two follows in the local tram, where the narrative reveals that Maria wassent by Dr Krása to pick up his guest from India. In the next scenes Maria leads
Kameshwar through historic Prague, and the two grow visibly closer. The Prague
part ends after approximately twenty-five minutes, with a theatrical performanceby Maria and the theatre company, closely followed by Kameshwar as part of theaudience. The stage backdrop clearly bears Husain’s signature of oversized rearing
horses. In a discussion about the making of the film, Husain’s eldest son, Owais,
who was responsible for the Prague interlude, recounts that, as a location, Prague
was interesting because he sees the city as a corridor between East and West
Europe. Not dissimilar from Husain’s first feature film, Gaja Gamini, from 2000,
which is better known, Meenaxi was commercially not very successful. As to theplot of Gaja Gamini, Patricia Uberoi has said that it is about ‘the universal woman
who takes many forms in many times and places’,36 and the same could be said
about Meenaxi. The film’s soundtrack, for which award-winning composer Allah
Rakha Rahman was responsible, underscores the special features of the threelocations with distinctive music. In the Prague section the music accompanies thecamera’s gaze, which often pans between historic architecture and monuments
and their elongated shadows. Apart from the autobiographical element, then, it
is music, movement, and a sense of theatricality that makes Meenaxi’s Prague
scenes especially relatable to the twenty-three Prague drawings from 1976.
In summary, not only the drawings, the large-scale painting, and the film
Meenaxi but all the works that the artist produced in Prague and with reference toPrague, most of which have only been mentioned here in passing, are a material
reminder of a special relationship that the artist nurtured over many decades withthis city and its people. In terms of numbers, these form a considerable body ofwork and therefore deserve attention. His correspondence, personal visits in both
directions, and above all, the reviews of his works in local media testify to a connection that goes far beyond the political framework of the Cold War.37 A detailed
reading of his Prague works, as undertaken here on the basis of selected examples,182

Simone Willecan establish an understanding of how the artist viewed Prague as a nexus where
East and West connected under non-hierarchical conditions. Husain’s works on
paper, together with works by other Indian modernist artists,38 are part of theCollection of Asian Art at the NGP. While they were regularly on display during
the communist era, they have not been shown or dealt with since the early 1990s.
Together with the team at the NGP, I am currently preparing an exhibition ofSouth Asian modernist masters from the Prague collections that will draw on thetransregional connections that were forged and cultivated there during the Cold
War period and contributed to an understanding of Indian art which may wellhave been rare at the time outside of India.

NOTES
*
1.

2.

3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

8.

9.
10.

11.
12.

The completion of this study was made possible thanks to the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)(P29536-G26).
There is a large amount of literature on M. F. Husain’s art and life available in both Hindi and English.
I am listing a selection of titles that are representative of this literature: Richard Bartholomew and Shiv
S. Kapur, Husain (New York: Abrams, 1971); Geeta Kapur, Contemporary Indian Artists (New Delhi:
Vikas, 1978); Monica Juneja, ‘Reclaiming the Public Sphere: Husain’s Portrayal of Saraswati and Draupadi’, Economic and Political Weekly 32, no. 4 (1997): 155–157; Yashodhara Dalmia, The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001); Susan S. Bean, ‘Husain’s
Mahabarata’, in Epic India: M. F. Husain’s Mahabarata Project, ed. M. F. Husain, Susan Bean, and Sashi
Tharoor (Salem, MA: Peabody Essex Museum, 2006), 27–44; Daniel A. Herwitz, ‘Maqbool Fida Husain:
The Artist as India’s National Hero’, Third Text 20, no. 1 (2006): 41–55; Sumathi Ramaswamy (ed.), Barefoot Across the Nation: Maqbool Fida Husain and the Idea of India (Oxon: Routledge, 2011); Karin Zitzewitz, The Art of Secularism: The Cultural Politics of Modernist Art in Contemporary India (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2014), 17–37; Sonal Khullar, Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National
Identity, and Modernism in India, 1930–1990 (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 90–129;
In 1955 he was commissioned to produce a mural for Air India’s reservation office in Geneva. See
https://www.airindiacollector.com/blog/m-f-hussain-and-his-air-india-creations (last visited 2 February 2022). Prague, Hong Kong, and Bangkok followed. The Air India Prague office was located at NaPříkopě 858/20, Prague 1. I would like to thank Zdenka Klimtová for this information.
Khullar, Worldly Affiliations, 90.
Khullar, Worldly Affiliations, 90.
The group included Francis Newton Souza, Syed Haider Raza, Krishnaji Howlaji Ara, Sadanand
Krishnaji Bakre, and Hari Ambadas Gade.
The J.J. School of Art was established by the British in 1857 and administered by them until 1947.
Early in his career, Husain travelled to study the Khajuraho complex, famous for its tenth- and eleventh-century erotic sculptures. See Zitzewitz, The Art of Secularism, 24; see also Tapati Guha-Thakurta,
Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India (New York: Columbia University Press), 237–267.
Art historian Atreyee Gupta has recently pointed to Egyptian figurative influences that preoccupied theartist after a trip to Egypt. See Atreyee Gupta, ‘After Bandung: Transacting the Nation in a Postcolonial
World’, in Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945–1965, ed. Okwui Enwezor, Katy Siegel,and Ulrich Wilmes (London and Munich: Presetel and Haus der Kunst, 2016), 632–637 (exh. cat.).
Susan S. Bean, ‘East Meets East in Husain’s Horses’, in Lightning: From the Private Collection of Marguerite and Kent Charugundla (New York: Tamarind Gallery, 2007), 11–20.
https://www.aaa-a.org/programs/mexican-muralists-in-china-a-presentation-by-zheng-shengtian-and-marisol-villela-balderrama (last visited 4 February 2022). For more information on Pablo
Picasso, visit https://www.pablopicasso.org/dove-of-peace.jsp (last visited 24 July 2023); https://www.
tate.org.uk/art/artworks/picasso-dove-p11366 (last visited 24 July 2023).
Bean, ‘East Meets East in Husain’s Horses’, 12.
Susan S. Bean, ‘Viewed from Across the Globe’, in Barefoot Across the Nation, ed. Sumathi Ramaswamy,
248.

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13.
14.

15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.

24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.

Marie returned the so-called Maria Collection to Husain in the early 2000s, and it is currently with theStellar International Art Foundation.
Khalid Mohamed, Where Art Though: An Autobiography (Mumbai: M. F. Husain Foundation, 2002);
https://www.thequint.com/entertainment/mf-husain-maria-zourkova-an-incomplete-love-story-tabumeenaxi-a-tale-of-3-cities#read-more (last visited 2 February 2021); see also Pradeep Chandra, M.F.
Husain: A Pictorial Tribute (New Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2011), 132.
A number of these drawing appear in an auction catalogue from Pundole’s: Husain: Works from theCollection of the Late Badrivishal Pitti (Mumbai: Pundole’s, 2013) (exh. cat.).
See Zdenka Klimtová’s contribution, ‘Lubor Hájek and Indian Modernist Art’, in this book.
I would like to thank Zdenka Klimtová for her help in naming and locating monuments and places inthese drawings.
See Mohamed, Where Art Though.
See Zitzewitz, The Art of Secularism, 24. See also note 38 in that publication.
Zitzewitz, The Art of Secularism, 24.
See Khullar, Worldly Affiliations, 94; see also Gupta, ‘After Bandung’, 635.
Ila Pal, Beyond the Canvas: An Unfinished Portrait of M. F. Husain (New Delhi: Indus Books, 1994), 84,
here quoted in Zitzewitz, The Art of Secularism, 24.
On processes of transculturality, see Monica Juneja and Christian Kravagna, ‘Understanding Transculturalism: Monica Juneja and Christian Kravagna in Conversation’, in Transcultural Modernisms, ed.
Model House Research Group (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013), 22–33. On transculturality, see Engaging
Transculturality: Concepts, Key Terms, Case Studies, ed. Laila Abu-Er-Rub, Christiane Brosius, Sebastian
Meurer, Diamantis Panagiotopoulos, and Susan Richter (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2019).
See fig. 4 in Zdenka Klimtova’s article in this volume.
Alena Vosečková, ‘Neobvyklá vernisáž’ [An Unusual Exhibition Opening], Nový Orient, no. 7 (1976):
217–218. See also Zdenka Klimtová’s text ‘Lubor Hájek and Indian Modernist Art’ in this volume.
Vosečková, ‘Neobvyklá vernisáž’, 217.
Vosečková, ‘Neobvyklá vernisáž’, 218.
Khullar, Worldly Affiliations, 97.
Khullar, Worldly Affiliations, 97.
Khullar, Worldly Affiliations, 97.
Epigraph: Maqbul [Maqbool] F. Husain, quoted in Bartholomew and Kapur, Husain, in Khullar, Worldly
Affiliations, 90.
Bartholomew and Kapur, Husain, in Khullar, Worldly Affiliations, 90.
Vosečková, ‘Neobvyklá vernisáž’, 218.
Note that in the film Marie becomes Maria.
Note that Maria doesn’t ride her bike but pushes it.
Patricia Oberoi, ‘The Bliss of Madhuri’, in Barefoot Across the Nation, ed. Sumathi Ramaswamy, 218.
In my forthcoming single authored book with the working title South Asia in Central Europe, I focus on
the role played by a range of media as discursive platforms.
See Zdenka Klimtová’s contribution to this volume.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abu-Er-Rub, Laila, Christiane Brosius, Sebastian Meurer, Diamantis Panagiotopoulos, and Susan Richter, eds.
Engaging Transculturality: Concepts, Key Terms, Case Studies. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2019.
Bartholomew, Richard, and Shiv S. Kapur. Husain. New York: Abrams, 1971.
Bean, Susan S. ‘East Meets East in Husain’s Horses’. In Lightning: From the Private Collection of Marguerite andKent Charugundla, edited by Marguerite Charungla, Kent Charungla, and Deepanjana D. Klein, 11–20.
New York: Tamarind Gallery, 2007.
Bean, Susan S. ‘Husain’s Mahabarata’. In Epic India: M. F. Husain’s Mahabarata Project, edited by M. F. Husain,
Susan Bean, and Sashi Tharoor, 27–44. Salem, MA: Peabody Essex Museum, 2006.
Chandra, Pradeep. M.F. Husain: A Pictorial Tribute. New Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2011.
Dalmia, Yashodhara: The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives. New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2001.
Guha-Thakurta, Tapati. Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.

184

Simone WilleGupta, Atreyee. ‘After Bandung: Transacting the Nation in a Postcolonial World’. In Postwar: Art Between the
Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945–1965, edited by Okwui Enwezor, Katy Siegel, and Ulrich Wilmes, 632–
637. Munich and New York: Haus der Kunst and Prestel, 2016. Exhibition catalogue.
Herwitz, Daniel A. ‘Maqbool Fida Husain: The Artist as India’s National Hero’. In Third Text 20, no. 1 (2006):
41–55.
Husain: Works from the Collection of the Late Badrivishal Pitti, Mumbai: Pundole’s, 2013. Exhibition catalogue.
Juneja, Monica, and Christian Kravagna. ‘Understanding Transculturalism: Monica Juneja and Christian Kravagna in Conversation’. In Transcultural Modernisms, edited by Model House Research Group, 22–33.
Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013.
Juneja, Monica. ‘Reclaiming the Public Sphere: Husain’s Portrayal of Saraswati and Draupadi’. Economic andPolitical Weekly 32, no. 4 (1997): 155–157.
Kapur, Geeta. Contemporary Indian Artists. New Delhi: Vikas, 1978.
Khullar, Sonal. Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity, and Modernism in India, 1930–1990.
Oakland: University of California Press, 2015.
Mohamed, Khalid. Where Art Though: An Autobiography. Mumbai: M. F. Husain Foundation, 2002.
Oberoi, Patricia. ‘The Bliss of Madhuri’. In Barefoot Across the Nation, edited by Sumathi Ramaswamy, 213–234.
Oxon: Routledge, 2011.
Pal, Ila. Beyond the Canvas: An Unfinished Portrait of M. F. Husain. New Delhi: Indus Books, 1994.
Ramaswamy, Sumathi, ed. Barefoot Across the Nation: Maqbool Fida Husain and the Idea of India. Oxon: Routledge, 2011.
Vosečková, Alena. ‘Neobvyklá vernisáž’ [An Unusual Exhibition Opening]. Nový Orient, no. 7 (1976): 217–218.
Zitzewitz, Karin. The Art of Secularism: The Cultural Politics of Modernist Art in Contemporary India. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2014.

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THE ARCHIVE:
A REPOSITORY

COLLECTING EAST ASIAN OBJECTS IN SLOVENIA:A METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH TO CREATINGTHE VAZ DATABASE*
Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik

INTRODUCTION
Establishing the history of individual art objects and other collectibles is never a
simple task, but in the region of today’s Slovenia, which in the twentieth century
not only underwent two world wars but also belonged successively to four different countries1 before the Republic of Slovenia was established in 1991, socio­
political circumstances often led to the loss of the records that might establish
an object’s provenance. Bereft of their context, objects ended up in museum
collections, often condemned to a dormant life in storage. The position of East
Asian objects is even more problematic, as curators and museum professionals
lacked the specific knowledge to handle them, which in turn led to the neglect of
not only determining their provenance but also assessing the material and physical characteristics that would define each object’s typology and original place ofmanu­facture. Such objects tended to be placed in other collections or considered
lost, while long-term storage in museum repositories without proper documentation and treatment often led to damage.
It was not until work began on the three-year national research project(2018–2021) entitled East Asian Collections in Slovenia: Inclusion of Slovenia in
the Global Exchanges of Objects and Ideas with East Asia, supported by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency and overseen by the Department of AsianStudies at the University of Ljubljana, that East Asian objects and collections invarious museums were comprehensively studied for the first time. In cooperation with museum professionals and systematically following an interdisciplinary
approach, the project team investigated five major East Asian collections for the
first time. The aesthetic and formal characteristics of individual objects, as wellas the ways they could be interpreted and their connection with the people that
produced them, were addressed. In addition, a database of East Asian collections
Collecting East Asian Objects in Slovenia

189

Figure 1. Screenshot of the VAZ database entry page. https://vazcollections.si/. (See plate 28, p. 265)

in Slovenia was created (hereafter the VAZ database),2 based on specific characteristics of the collection material in Slovenian territory (fig. 1). Thus, a semantic
background was created that typologically classified the objects from East Asiaand further defined the metadata specifications. In this way, we established classification typologies and created a methodologically based database that allows foruser-friendly use and systematic analytical and synthetic review of the material
in Slovenian museums.

METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH AND STRUCTURE OF THE VAZ DATABASE
Within the framework of the East Asian Collections project in Slovenia, we haveso far identified twenty-one collections scattered in various museums across
Slovenia.3 The list includes objects of East Asian origin, including photographs
and prints that reached Slovenia between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries(before the 1980s). Moreover, it also includes the correspondence of the Carniolan Jesuit Ferdinand Augustin Hallerstein (1703–1774), who was head of the
Astronomy Board at the Chinese Qianlong Court in the eighteenth century, andwhose letters are preserved in Slovenian public institutions. It should be notedthat the term ‘collection’ is used in a broad sense here. We are talking about individual legacies that have been handed over to public institutions rather than the
documented collections of a museum. Some collections are rich and diverse,
while others comprise only a single photo album or postcard album or a few individual objects left to museums by the owners or their heirs.
Most objects of East Asian origin were thus left as bequests by various individuals (sailors, missionaries, travellers, and others) who visited China or Japan in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Such journeys were made pos190

Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik

sible as a result of Austria-Hungary’s newly established diplomatic relations with
East Asia in 1869, coupled with the opening of the Suez Canal in the same year,
which gave a growing number of Austro-Hungarian merchant and military ships
access to the seas. A few of the collections were also created after WWII, when
the newly founded Yugoslavia established diplomatic relations with East Asian
countries and sent the first diplomats and political representatives to these territories. The objects these various travellers brought back, including photographs,
postcards, and archival documents, thus define East Asian material culture in
Slovenia and show the many mutual interactions and rich exchanges that took
place mainly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
After preparing a detailed review of individual collections and objects ofEast Asian origin, our next step was to determine the physical properties ofobjects (dimensions, material, shape, colour, manufacturing technique, motifs,
special features, damage), their origin, date, purpose, and use, and to identify
any inscriptions in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean characters. This allowed us to
document each object with concrete information about its production, original
location, purpose and use. We were then in a position to determine which typesof objects were specific to the Slovene space, whether individual types of objects
could be associated with different social strata and what similarities or differences
could be identified with collecting practices in other European regions.
Some of the main objectives of this research included to highlight the mobility of cultural objects and depict different phases of their lives and to show theimportance of collections in the peripheries of the former imperial and colonial
centres. Contemporary research on the history of collecting East Asian material
has focused mostly on larger collections and thus on collectors and connoisseurs
from Western Europe and North America.4 The early focus on how imperialist
and colonialist ideology influenced the way such objects were classified and perceived5 has more recently given way to an exploration of the connections between
an object’s materiality and its cultural significance.6 The seminal idea that objects
have a ‘cultural biography’ was first introduced by Igor Kopytoff and Arjun Appadurai in 1986 and has inspired several interdisciplinary studies drawing on art
history, history, archaeology, anthropology, and even economics and other social
sciences. This approach emphasises the mobility of a cultural object, which cannot be fully understood by considering only one phase of its life cycle. Rather,
its identity is constructed in the course of exchanges between producers, users,
collectors, conservators, exhibitors, and museum visitors. Human agency should
always be considered in this context, because objects that do not interact withpeople remain ‘immobile’.7 Therefore, many scholars have studied the recontextualisation of objects as they move from one place to another, tracking the way their
meaning changes again and again.
Such an approach is less established in the field of East Asian studies, although
the tradition of the fictive biography of things was already a literary genre in Tangdynasty China (618–907).8 Despite this long tradition of fictive biographies, it was
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191

not until the twenty-first century that scholars began to apply the biographicalapproach to East Asian objects. One of the earliest studies was conducted by Louise
Tythacott, whose research focused on the lives of five Buddhist statues – from their
casting in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and their transition to England for theGreat Exhibition of 1851 in London to their rediscovery in the Liverpool Museum
depot in 2005.9 A similar approach has been taken in only a handful of other studies of objects made in Asia, which generally focus on the transcultural context.10
Following recent research developments, we have therefore attempted to takea broader view and provide answers to the many questions that arise related toEast Asian material culture in Slovenia. In doing so, we have focused on fourmain themes: routes and trade connections; status of people that travelled to East
Asia; types of East Asian objects and the canon of collectibles; and exchange ofideas and perception of such objects. In particular, we seek answers to the following questions: By what routes did objects from East Asia reach the territoryof present-day Slovenia? What trade relations enabled the sale or resale of theseobjects? Who were the people from the Slovene ethnic territory who travelled toEast Asia on the threshold of the twentieth century? How did they collect objects?
What types of East Asian objects are specific to the Slovenian area? How did theyfunction as collectibles? Did the objects serve as curios, souvenirs, or prestige or
aesthetic objects? What similarities or differences can be observed in the representative canon of collectibles when we compare it to those operating in former
major centres of colonial power? How did people live with these objects in theirprivate environment? How did they use and display them? How do these objects
testify to the material conditions, collecting patterns, and values of their collectors?
What do they tell us about the processes of material and ideational flows between
the Slovenian and East Asian spaces? To what extent did East Asian objects help
shape the mental worlds of sailors, the local nobility, and the bourgeoisie?
The questions outlined above are based on insights from the history of material culture and collecting, which conceives of objects as social and cultural
products and emphasises their circulation and recontextualisation. With the helpof archival and fieldwork, we tried to reconstruct the provenance of individual
objects and thereby identify the main owners of East Asian objects in Slovenia. Through microhistory and by adopting a bottom-up approach, we further
attempted to reconstruct the family stories of individuals who came into direct orindirect contact with East Asian cultures and societies. In addition, by researching the biographies of individual objects, we addressed the question of how they
were transferred from private ownership to the public sphere. The descendants ofsailors constitute a special case here: they often approach museum institutions for
additional information about individual objects from East Asia which they still
have at home and which they are considering selling or donating.
All these questions also raise the issue of what constitutes East Asian heritage in Slovenia. We have built the semantic background of the definition of East
Asian cultural heritage in Slovenia on the conceptual scheme that we developed
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Figure 2. Screenshot of the VAZ database, with a description of individual objects. https://vazcollections.
si/predmeti/kipec-smejocega-se-buda/. (See plate 29, p. 265)within the international project Pagode – Europeana China.11 The starting position was to consider Europe and China or East Asia as a space of multiple anddiverse interactions that began as early as the seventh and sixth centuries bcewith gold mining by the Scythians in the Tianshan Mountains.12 The well-established anthropological notion of flows is used as a central conceptual approach
to highlight the connections between the two regions. The Europe–China spaceis addressed in terms of three main types of flows: (1) of objects, (2) of ideas
and practices (i.e. knowledge), and (3) of people ‘in motion’. The appearance ofmany East Asian objects in European museums, galleries, archives, libraries, orother institutions indicates that the objects circulated in various ways and arrived
at their present locations by different routes – brought by missionaries, sailors,merchants, diplomatic and military personnel, or adventurers who had travelled
to China and other parts of East Asia. Both objects and people promoted ideational exchange between Europe and China, as evidenced by the various ideas
and practices exchanged between the two regions (e.g. art, architecture, and landscape design, philosophy, literature, food, fashion, medicine, religious practices,and perceptions of China). The conceptual scheme distinguishes three types ofobjects representing Chinese cultural heritage: Chinese objects, China-related
objects, and documents relating to the networks that enable the flow of objects.
Into this last group fall any visual or written materials, such as maps, letters,
receipts, inventory books, ledgers, and diaries that document the various routes
and networks built up over centuries. On the basis of this definition, the East
Asian objects in Slovenia also include various types of documents that shed lighton the creation of networks linking the two regions, such as the letters of theJesuit Hallerstein, the diaries of sailors, or lists of purchased items.
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193

Such ideas and concepts are also embedded in the architectural structure of
the VAZ database, which was developed in parallel with the identification andcategorisation processes. The data are organised in terms of three main categories: objects, collections assembled by individual people or collectors, and theinstitutions that hold these (fig. 1). These categories allow for a comprehensive
and systematic search for different types of objects in all collections housed in different museums or for individual collections or collectors, thus giving particularemphasis to the circulation of objects and movement of people from one place toanother. More detailed information (region, period or dynasty, century, material,type) is also recorded about each object, in a searchable manner (fig. 2). In thisway, the database user can better understand what types of objects from different
regions of East Asia are typical collectibles of Slovenian travellers in a particularperiod or what material is typically used in different types of objects or in different regions, etc. This allows a researcher not only to look up specific information
about objects and the various data associated with them but also to search theindividual collections and museums that house these objects or find out about
the status of the relevant collectors or owners, their collecting practices, and how
their collections were assembled. The structure of the database thus enables bothdata analysis and data display through various web visualisations.

TYPES OF OBJECTS SPECIFIC TO SLOVENIA
The collections of East Asian objects differ in a variety of ways, especially in thetype and number of objects and in the goals of the collector who assembled them.
There are many sociopolitical and cultural factors at play here, ranging from thesphere of purchasing power, the context of exchange, and accessibility to aesthetic
ideals and ideological views. In this regard, we must constantly be aware of therelevant role of people and their actions, remembering that we are dealing with arelationship between a person and an object. The way a person artistically re-eva­
luates an object from another culture reveals much more about the person andtheir interpretation of the object than it does about the object itself. Any suchinterpretation is actively and inextricably linked to the creation or co-creationof society and culture, groups, and individuals with their identities, habits, andcustoms. Once we understand this relationship between people or societies andobjects, we can say that we also come to know ourselves anew. From this point ofview, an insight into East Asian collections in Slovenia and their specific language
in relation to the social factors, cultural determinants, and aesthetic views of theindividuals or larger groups who brought objects to Slovenia is crucial.
To understand what types of objects are specific to the Slovenian territory,
it was important to have a comprehensive overview of all the objects in different collections. Therefore, one of the biggest challenges we encountered during
the research was creating a typology. Many collections contain small, trivial
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objects for everyday use, such as wall calendars, streetcar tickets, paper bookmarks, small tableware, or miniature models or toys, which on the surface havelittle monetary value.13 How should we define them, and what category should
they be assigned to? The designation ‘everyday objects’, with which we started,soon proved inappropriate, as it was difficult, if not impossible, to draw the line
between everyday objects and other types of objects. A beautifully embroideredsilk robe, a porcelain bowl of peaches, or an elegantly carved chair can also be
defined as a utilitarian object. As such, most objects can be classified as commodities. We have therefore based our typology on the function or use of the objects.
It was important to understand in which environments and for what purposes
the objects were used in their primary environment. In this way, and following
the previously mentioned conceptual scheme for defining Chinese and China-related cultural heritage in Europe, we have created seventeen object type headings:
architecture and models; musical instruments and theatrical properties; games
and toys; sculptures and figurines; books and printed materials; numismatics;
garments, footwear, and accessories; weapons and military equipment; fans; furniture and interior decor; vessels, dishes, and utensils; personal care objects; utensils for smoking and substance use; postcards and photographs; religious objects;
paintings and graphic art; and other objects.
This typology, which encompasses practically all established categories of East
Asian art seen in other European museums, reveals the wide variety of object
types. The only significant category missing here is that of the bronze vesselsof the Shang (1554–1045 bce) and Zhou (1045–221 bce) dynasties, which areabundantly represented in some major European and North American museums.
Another distinguishing feature of the Slovenian collections is the period of production of the objects they hold, which date mostly from the late nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries. The reason for this lies in the economic status of thecollectors, their purchasing power, and the way objects were acquired, which wasoften more random in terms of cognitive views and aesthetic evaluation than theacquisition procedure of many systematic collections in other Western metropolises. An exception is the collection of the high-ranking naval officer Ivan Skušek(1877–1947), who, as a result of political circumstances, stayed in Beijing forsix years, from 1914 to 1920. During this time, he developed a special aesthetic
sensitivity to Chinese heritage, collecting Chinese objects with the intention of
establishing a Chinese museum upon his return home.
The current study of East Asian objects kept in various Slovenian museums
and other institutions has shown that the collections were built up mainly throughdirect contact between people from Slovenia and East Asia. The majority of those
who travelled to East Asia at the turn of the twentieth century were sailors in theAustro-Hungarian military or on merchant ships. Once they arrived in East Asia,
their stay was mainly confined to coastal areas and ports. The higher-ranking
officers, however, had more opportunities for contact with local authorities orother wealthier locals, which also gave them a better insight into the interior ofCollecting East Asian Objects in Slovenia

195their homes. Sailors of lower rank usually bought and sent postcards or small,
inexpensive items more suitable for transport by ship, which they gave to loved
ones, distant relatives, and friends. They were especially fond of silk embroiderywith motifs of Austro-Hungarian ships, but they also bought teacups, small
vases and other porcelain objects, decorative trays, clothing, fans, small statuettes, coins, and walking sticks. Many of these items were ‘export art’, the mostaffordable medium for Slovenian sailors. Research has shown that many objectsof Japanese origin were obviously produced for export, while some of the objects
from China were made for local use. Higher-ranking officers with greater purchasing power, on the other hand, not only bought more items but also chosemore valuable porcelain pieces and embroidery as well as decorative screens oflarger dimensions. Collections were thus shaped by the accessibility of objects incoastal areas, the intention behind the purchase, and the purchasing power, but
most importantly, they reflected the range of interests and aesthetic values of the
Slovenians who bought them.14
The missionaries’ collections are particular in character. The objects they contain are generally related to the mission of spreading the Christian faith, so theyreflect a deeper interest in indigenous religious rites. The collection that Fr Peter
Baptist Turk (1874–1944) compiled in 1912 and 1913 and sent to the Provincial
Museum of Carniola (now kept in the Slovene Ethnographic Museum), with its
wide range of religious objects (bells, ritual drums, praying mills, ritual weapons vajra, ritual money, etc.), embroidery, and Buddhist and Daoist statuettes,
thus documented the religious and other spiritual rituals of the local population,
therefore helping the Catholic Church find out to what extent elements of Christianity could be combined with traditional frameworks, mostly in a syncretic way.

SLOVENIAN COLLECTORS OF EAST ASIAN OBJECTS: WHO, HOW, WHAT
An analysis of individual travellers and collectors reveals that at the turn of thetwentieth century, most of those who visited East Asia from Slovene ethnicalterritories were sailors serving on Austro-Hungarian naval and merchant ships.
The second significant group comprised Franciscan and Salesian missionaries.
The third, and smallest, group were scientists, scholars, and diplomats whose
duties were to conduct scientific research or to carry out diplomatic-consularmissions for the Austro-Hungarian government. The geographical distance andthe financial burden that such trips entailed meant that only a few people fromthe Slovene ethnic territories travelled to East Asia on their own. One of these
individuals was Alma M. Karlin (1889–1950), the famous traveller, writer, andamateur researcher from Celje (fig. 3). The nature of her journey distinguishes
her among the Slovenes who visited East Asia at that time. In November 1919
she embarked on an eight-year journey around the world, which took her to atleast forty-five different countries. During her travels, she collected a large num196

Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik

Figure 3. Alma M. Karlin with her collection. Black-and-white photograph, photographer unknown. Courtesyof the Manuscript collection in the National and University Library in Ljubljana.

ber of different objects, which are now kept in the Celje Regional Museum andincluded in the VAZ database. Karlin made her living mainly by working as aninterpreter and journalist, but she often ran into financial difficulties and wasforced to take other jobs to make ends meet. She was therefore able to purchase
only small everyday items or souvenirs, in addition to those that she received as
gifts. Interestingly, because of these limitations, her collection includes objects
that were of no interest to the wealthier collectors of her time and are quite rare
today. Karlin’s legacy is rich and varied. In addition to a large collection of objects,
she also left published and unpublished works of fiction, journalistic writings,
and extensive correspondence, all of which attest to her great interest in foreign
lands and cultures. These are kept in the National and University Library, Celje
Central Library, and Celje Museum of Recent History.15
The earliest objects to arrive from East Asia, now found in the Ceramics Collection of the National Museum of Slovenia, came to the museum almost one
hundred years before Karlin’s first visit to East Asia, soon after the museum’s foundation as the Provincial Museum of Carniola in 1821. In the first ten years of its
existence, the museum acquired Chinese and Japanese porcelain dishes and someother items, including seven ivory figurines, wooden figures, and a series of twelve
colour paintings depicting Chinese warriors, which were mostly donated by prominent and wealthy members of Carniolan society. It is worth noting that theseCollecting East Asian Objects in Slovenia

197

Figure 4. Rose Chair (Meiguiyi 玫瑰椅). Early Qing
dynasty. Skušek Collection, Slovene Ethnographic
Museum. VAZ database: https://vazcollections.si/
predmeti/rozni-stol/. (See plate 30, p. 266)

objects were categorised in the museum
as cultural history, while East Asian andother non-European objects sent by the
missionaries were generally classified as
ethnographic material. This anomaly wasat the heart of the problem the museum
faced once these objects entered its space:
not only how to store and display the newacquisitions but, more importantly, how
to categorise them.16
If East Asian porcelain pieces were the earliest objects of East Asian origin
to enter a Slovenian museum, the largest collection is that of Ivan Skušek, now
housed in the Slovene Ethnographic Museum. It consists of about five hundred
Chinese objects, some of which are reportedly of imperial provenance: fromrichly embroidered textiles, paintings, albums, Buddhist statues, ceramics, andporcelain to furniture, decorative wall screens, and a model of a gate. We alsofind items ranging from coins, musical instruments, and everyday objects to photographs, rare books, and old postcards. The most remarkable and valuable partof his collection consists of various pieces of furniture, which testify to Skušek’s
pioneering discovery of the elegant lines of Chinese craftsmanship (fig. 4).17
Ivan Skušek arrived in Beijing in 1914 purely by chance. When the Japanesedeclared war on Germany and Austria in August 1914, he was the intendant of theAustro-Hungarian cruiser S.M.S. Kaiserin Elisabeth. His ship anchored in front of
the city of Qingdao in Shandong to try to defend the German concession against
Japanese attack. After the Japanese victory, the captured soldiers were taken to
Japanese prison camps, while some sailors were taken by the Chinese. Skušek thus
landed in Beijing at the end of November 1914 and remained there until 1920. To
this day, little is known about his stay in Beijing, but judging from the letters sent
to him by the missionary Father Maurus Kluge from the city of Taiyuan in Shanxi
Province, which have survived, and from recent research in the Austrian statearchives, Skušek took on high management role in the internment camp set up forAustrian prisoners of war after China entered the First World War in 1917. In thisway, he found himself at the centre of a hugely dynamic art trade, which was theconsequence of the politically turbulent events set in motion by the Opium Wars.
During his six years in Beijing, he systematically collected a wide range of objects
with a view to establishing a museum upon his return home. The museum building was to be built on a grand scale in the style of traditional Chinese architecture:
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Figure 5. ‘Hagoromocho
in Yokohama’. Colour
postcard. Ivan Koršič’s
Postcard Album, Sergej
Mašera Maritime Museumin Piran. VAZ database:https://vazcollections.si/
en/predmeti/postcardhagoromocho-in-yokohama/.
(See plate 31, p. 267)

he even had a model of a Chinese house ready. Apparently, he planned to display
the objects against the background of authentic interiors of the houses of the Chinese elite. Unfortunately, his financial situation prevented him from realising his
ambitions, but by recording his fascinating story, albeit in a virtual manner, theVAZ database has in a way fulfilled his wish to set up a museum.19
In addition to the National Museum of Slovenia’s Ceramics Collection and thecollections of Alma Karlin and Ivan Skušek, the VAZ database currently includes
two further interesting collections. The Asian collection housed in the Celje
Regional Museum, which comprises a variety of objects, such as furniture, screens,lacquer objects, fans, and Jesuit missionary scrolls, is the legacy of the Nazi andcommunist policy of confiscating valuable objects from noble families and otherrich individuals during and after WWII. The objects came to the museum fromthe Federal Collection Centre, which was established in 1945 to collect and preserve works of art of cultural and historical value throughout Slovenia after they
became state property. When the confiscated property was recorded, sparse andgeneralised notes were made, which makes it extremely difficult for researchers to
track the biographies of these objects. Finally, there is an interesting album with alarge number of postcards from East Asia, dating from before the WWI, which is
now in the Sergej Mašera Maritime Museum in Piran (fig. 5). They were collectedby Ivan Koršič (1870–1941), a high-ranking Austro-Hungarian naval officer.

CONCLUSION
The VAZ database currently includes the majority of objects in the five collections
briefly presented above. All five – the Ceramics Collections, the Asian Collection,
the Skušek and Karlin Collections and the Koršič collection of postcards – will
be documented in their entirety by 2025. The focus has been on the organised
forms of collecting and the collecting patterns of privileged individuals from the
Slovene ethnic territory who visited East Asia in the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries. To reconstruct cultural and material contacts between East
Collecting East Asian Objects in Slovenia

199

Asia and Slovenia in a truly comprehensive way, it will also be necessary to consider the ‘orphaned objects’ of East Asian origin, which are bereft of their contexts
as a result of sociopolitical and historical circumstances. This will enable us tofurther analyse the perception of East Asian cultures in the Slovene cultural spaceand place its collecting culture within the broader European context. In the next
phase of the project, we will include this category of objects along with othercollections. We will also expand the existing database by mapping and digitally
visualising individual objects. In this way we will continue to develop new scientific research approaches and methods for the study of collections of local origin,define classification typologies, and by 2030, VAZ will be a methodically designed
database that will enable the user-friendly use and systematic analytical and synthetic review of the East Asian material in Slovenian museums.
The VAZ website uses curated methods to bring to life a range of interesting and inspiring objects, not only presenting detailed information about eachone but also revealing its story and the identity of its various owners. We regularly publish blog posts, create galleries and interactive, dynamic presentationsof individual objects, and prepare thematic virtual exhibitions. To this editorial
and curated content, we intend to add multimedia presentations, 3D models of
individual objects, and short educational and documentary videos, using various
forms of interaction with the local and international community. The VAZ website tells the story of a number of lesser-known individual objects and collections– most of which are still hidden – and also sheds light on material conditions andquestions of social status in Slovenia and on the aesthetic trends that developed
there.

NOTES
*

1.

2.
3.

4.

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The research for this paper was carried out as part of two projects – East Asian Collections in Slovenia: Inclusion of Slovenia in the Global Exchanges of Objects and Ideas with East Asia (2018–2021) (no.
J7–9429) and Orphaned Objects: Examining East Asian Objects outside Organised Collecting Practices in
Slovenia (2021–2024) (no. J6–3133) – as well as the core research funding programme Asian Languages
and Cultures (no. P6–0243), all funded by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency.
Between the mid-fourteenth century and 1918, most of the Slovene ethnic territory was under Habsburg
rule. After the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918, the Slovenes co-founded the State of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs. After a month, the state became the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, which was
renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929. After the Second World War Slovenia joined the newly
formed Yugoslavia as a constituent republic, which existed until 1991.
The VAZ database is accessible at the following address: https://vazcollections.si/
For the list of all East Asian collections in Slovenia, see Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik, ‘Zbirateljska kultura
in vzhodnoazijske zbirke v Sloveniji’ (Collecting Practices and East Asian Collections in Slovenia), in
Procesi in odnosi v Vzhodni Aziji: zbornik EARL (Processes and Relations in East Asia: An EARL [EastAsia Resource Library] Volume), ed. Andrej Bekeš, Jana S. Rošker, and Zlatko Šabič (Ljubljana: Ljubljana
University Press, Faculty of Arts 2019), 93–138.
E.g. Craig Clunas, ‘Oriental Antiquities/Far Eastern Art’, in Formations of Colonial Modernity in East
Asia, ed. Tani E. Barlow (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press 1997), 413–446; StevenConn, ‘Where Is the East? Asian Objects in American Museums, from Nathan Dunn to Charles
Freer’, Winterthur Portfolio 35, no. 2/3 (summer–autumn 2000): 157–173; Stacey Piercon, Collectors,
Collections and Museums. The Field of Chinese Ceramics in Britain, 1560–1960 (Oxford: Peter Lang

Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik

5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

11.

12.
13.
14.
15.

16.
17.
18.
19.

2007); Louise Tythacott, The Lives of Chinese Objects: Buddhism, Imperialism and Display (New York:Berghahn Books 2011); Vimalin Rujivacharakul (ed.), Collecting China: The World, China, and a Historyof Collecting (Newark: University of Delaware Press 2011); Jason Steuber and Guolong Lai (eds.), Collectors, Collections and Collecting the Arts of China: Histories and Challenges (Gainesville: University Pressof Florida 2014); Louise Tythacott (ed.), Collecting and Displaying China’s ‘Summer Palace’ in the West:
The Yuanmingyuan in Britain and France (New York and London: Routledge 2018).
K. Ian Shin, ‘The Chinese Art “Arms Race”: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism in Chinese Art Collecting and Scholarship between the United States and Europe, 1900–1920’, Journal of American-East Asian
Relations 23, no. 3 (2016): 229–256; Conn, ‘Where is the East?’; Clunas, ‘Oriental Antiquities’.
Rujivacharakul, Collecting China.
Tythacott, The Lives of Chinese Objects, 8.
Alice Bianchi and Lyce Jankowski (eds.), The Social Life of Chinese Objects (Leiden: Brill, 2022).
Tythacott, The Lives of Chinese Objects.
Dorothy Ko, The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press 2017); Francis Allard, Yan Sun, and Katheryn M. Linduff (eds.),
Memory and Agency in Ancient China: Shaping the Life History of Objects (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2018); Anna Grasskamp and Monica Juneja (eds.), EurAsian Matters. China, Europe, andthe Transcultural Object, 1600–1800 (Cham: Springer 2018); Bianchi and Jankowski (eds.), The Social
Life of Chinese Objects.
Maja Veselič and Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik, Defining Chinese and China-related Cultural Heritagein Europe – A Conceptual Scheme https://photoconsortium.net/pagode/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/
PAGODE-Defining-Chinese-and-China-related-cultural-heritage-in-Europe-VB-MV-2020.12.02.pdf(Ljubljana: 2019). For more on the Pagode – Europeana China project, visit https://photoconsortium.
net/pagode/. Last visited 9 July 2023.
James Beattie and Lauren Murray, ‘Mapping the Social Lives of Objects: Popular and Artistic Responses
to the 1937 Exhibition of Chinese Art in New Zealand, East Asian History’, in ed. Remco Breuker andBenjamin Penny, special issue, East Asian History, no. 37 (2011): 39–58.
The role of small and trivial objects in the collection of Alma M. Karlin (1889–1950) has been exploredby Chikako Shigemori Bučar, ‘Trivial Objects from Taisho Japan in the Collection of Alma M. Karlin’,
Asian Studies 9, no. 3 (2021): 21–45.
See also Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik, ‘Collecting Chinese Objects in Slovenia at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, Ming Qing Yanjiu 24, issue 2 (2020): 161–180.
For more on Alma Karlin, see Barbara Trnovec, The Endless Journey of Alma M. Karlin: Life, Work,
Legacy (Celje and Ljubljana: Celje Regional Museum and Ljubljana University Press, Faculty of Arts
2020); Maja Veselič, ‘The Allure of the Mystical: East Asian Religious Traditions in the Eyes of Alma M.
Karlin’, Asian Studies 9, no. 3 (2021): 259–299; Klemen Senica, ‘Following in the Footsteps of Isabella
Bird? Alma Karlin and Her Representations of Japan’, Asian Studies 9, no. 3 (2021): 225–257; Shigemori
Bučar, ‘Trivial Objects’.
For more on museum classification of East Asian objects in Slovenia, see Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik,‘Between Ethnology and Cultural History: Where to Place East Asian Objects in Slovenian Museums?’,
Asian Studies 9, no. 3 (2021): 85–116.
Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik, ‘Skušek’s Discovery of Chinese Furniture’s Sophisticated Lines: The Collecting of Chinese Furniture and the Issue of its Categorisation’, in Centring the Periphery: New Pers­
pectives on Collecting East Asian Objects, ed. Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik (Leiden: Brill, 2023).
Maurus P. Kluge, Letters to Skušek, unpublished material (Ljubljana: Slovene Ethnographic Museum,1919). See also Mina Grčar, ‘Ivan Skušek Jr. and His Collection of Chinese Coins’, Asian Studies 9, no. 3(2021): 47–83.
For more on Ivan Skušek, see also Helena Motoh, ‘Lived-in Museum: The Early 20th Century Skušek
Collection’, Asian Studies 9, no. 3 (2021): 119–140; Tina Berdajs, ‘Retracing the Footsteps: Analysis of
the Skušek Collection’, Asian Studies 9, no. 3 (2021): 141–166.

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Clunas, Craig. ‘Oriental Antiquities/Far Eastern Art’. In Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia, editedby Tani E. Barlow, 413–446. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1997.
Conn, Steven. ‘Where Is the East? Asian Objects in American Museums, from Nathan Dunn to Charles Freer’.
Winterthur Portfolio 35, no. 2–3 (summer–autumn 2000): 157–173.
Grasskamp, Anna, and Monica Juneja, eds. EurAsian Matters. China, Europe, and the Transcultural Object,
1600–1800. Cham: Springer, 2018.
Grčar, Mina. ‘Ivan Skušek Jr. and His Collection of Chinese Coins’. Asian Studies 9, no. 3 (2021): 47–83.
Ko, Dorothy. The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2017.
Motoh, Helena. ‘Lived-in Museum: The Early 20th Century Skušek Collection’. Asian Studies 9, no. 3 (2021):
119–140.
Piercon, Stacey. Collectors, Collections and Museums. The Field of Chinese Ceramics in Britain, 1560–1960.
Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007.
Rujivacharakul, Vimalin, ed. Collecting China: The World, China, and a History of Collecting. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2011.
Senica, Klemen. ‘Following in the Footsteps of Isabella Bird? Alma Karlin and her Representations of Japan’.
Asian Studies 9, no. 3 (2021): 225–257.
Shigemori Bučar, Chikako. ‘Trivial Objects from Taisho Japan in the Collection of Alma M. Karlin’. Asian Studies 9, no. 3 (2021): 21–45.
Shin, K. Ian. ‘The Chinese Art “Arms Race”: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism in Chinese Art Collecting
and Scholarship between the United States and Europe, 1900–1920’. Journal of American-East Asian
Relations 23, no. 3 (2016): 229–256.
Steuber, Jason, and Guolong Lai, eds. Collectors, Collections and Collecting the Arts of China: Histories andChallenges. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014.
Trnovec, Barbara. The Endless Journey of Alma M. Karlin: Life, Work, Legacy. Celje and Ljubljana: Celje Regional
Museum and Ljubljana University Press, Faculty of Arts 2020.
Tythacott, Louise, ed. Collecting and Displaying China’s ‘Summer Palace’ in the West: The Yuanmingyuan in
Britain and France. New York and London: Routledge: 2018.
Tythacott, Louise. The Lives of Chinese Objects: Buddhism, Imperialism and Display. New York: Berghahn, 2011.
Vampelj Suhadolnik, Nataša. ‘Between Ethnology and Cultural History: Where to Place East Asian Objects in
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Vampelj Suhadolnik, Nataša. ‘Collecting Chinese Objects in Slovenia at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’.
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Vampelj Suhadolnik, Nataša. ‘Skušek’s Discovery of Chinese Furniture’s Sophisticated Lines: the Collecting ofChinese Furniture and the Issue of its Categorisation’. In Centring the Periphery: New Perspectives on
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COLLECTING ASIAN ART:
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

OF CENTRES, PERIPHERIES, VALUES,
AND JUDGEMENTS
Simone Wille in Conversation with Partha Mitter on ‘Decentering
Modernism’ and Modernist Routes beyond Western Europe

This conversation addresses colonisation in a broader sense, by entering it via
Western modernism, which exerted its cultural hegemony around the globe,
creating an asymmetrical relationship between the centre and the periphery; themetropolis created the ‘originary’ avant-garde discourse, and regions outside thecentre suffer from the problem of derivativeness and time lag. Within the global
colonial order, Asia, Africa, and Latin America were represented as being on themargins. Though less evident, there were margins within the centre, as exemplified by Eastern and Central Europe. This conversation will consider ways ofdecentring this unbalanced global situation by taking the case study of Indian art.
Simone Wille (SW): Partha, your work has been of tremendous importance tomany of us. You were the first art historian to study the limitations of the Western
canon and that, of course, resulted in your first book, Much Maligned Monsters:
History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
Paperback, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 and Oxford University
Press, Delhi 2013). The book that followed was Art and Nationalism in Colonial
India. 1850–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
In your important text ‘Decentering Modernism: Art History and AvantGarde Art from the Periphery’ (Mitter, Art Bulletin, 2008), your opening sentencereads as follows: ‘With the collapse of earlier certainties, the last two decades havewitnessed serious soul-searching among art historians about the future of the discipline’ (Mitter, Art Bulletin, 531). You then refer to Hans Belting, whose The Endof the History of Art (Belting, 1987), you say, ‘accepted the demise of art history
as a grand Hegelian narrative’ (Mitter, Art Bulletin, 2008, 531). You are sceptical
about his assumption that the diversity of art forms and practices ‘make the canon
look vulnerable’ (Mitter, Art Bulletin, 2008, 531).
You then point to the 2004 publication Art Since 1900 (2004), which you value
for its importance for modernist Western avant-garde art, but refer to its weakOf Centres, Peripheries, Values, and Judgements

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ness in leaving untouched many of those modernisms that were not developed in
the Western centres of modernism, which are Paris, Berlin, Moscow, New York,and to a degree, London.
And you were not the only one reacting with criticism to this volume. In 2008
the Polish art historian Piotr Piotrowski was also prompted by the publication Art
Since 1900 to formulate his critique of how the art of Central and Eastern Europe
continues to be excluded from the larger narrative. He set this out in an article
in Uměni/Art: ‘On the Spatial Turn, or Horizontal Art History’ (Piotr Piotrowski,‘On the Spatial Turn, or Horizontal Art History’, Uměni LVI, 2008: 378–383).
This seems to have coincided with ‘a moment of confluence of criticism’, with
one strand coming from the field of postcolonialism and the other from an art
history concerned with reconceptualising the relationship with the region – i.e.
Central Eastern Europe – and the global context. Where do you see the potential
in these two approaches? Where do they overlap?
Partha Mitter (PM): Thank you, Simone, you have raised some fundamental
questions. Let me try to answer them one by one.
I like your expression: ‘a moment of confluence of criticism’. But, in the accumulation of knowledge, there is always confluence – a number of scientists thinking of the same problem at once – DNA.
The questioning started as early as 1974 with Terry Smith’s essay, ‘The Provincialism Problem’, where he describes the position of Australian art vis-à-vis New
York as ‘subservience to an externally imposed hierarchy of values’.1 But his focus
is geographical, and he doesn’t theorise it as part of a wider political problem
and doesn’t see it as a problem of colonialism. This particular school of thought,
spatial and geographical, has been quite influential and has pushed back fromour work, you know. There was a very important conference in Lisbon, Portugal,
dedicated to the memory of the Greek scholar Foteini Vlachou (1975–2017), in
2019. Vlachou had pointed to Portugal and Greece as being on the margins andneglected by mainstream modernism, and she argued for an autonomous andindependent development of the periphery. The conference developed these ideas
further. Their approach was essentially geographical, centring on Portugal andsimilar regions remote from the metropolitan New York, London, and Paris. And,of course, my friend Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann wrote a book about spatial geographical marginalities that are remote from the metropolitan centres mentioned.2
Piotr Piotrowski made a more powerful intervention by pointing to the exclusionof Central and Eastern Europe from the dominant narrative of modernism. He also
identified this marginality as a form of colonial hegemony. Indeed, he expressed his
disappointment that I had not included these regions in my essay. I accept his criticism, but my aim was to develop a theory that would explain the global imbalance.
I have great admiration for Pietrowski, whom I met only briefly. Sadly, mydebate with him was cut short by his death. He provided a salutary reminder
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European continent, what remained unsaid for a long time was the fact that following the Second World War, these areas under the Soviet regime were tacitly
excluded from the general Western European societies, which divided the postwar world into three categories: First World (the liberal Euro-America); Second
World (communist bloc); Third World (former colonised countries). Art was oneof the casualties, and this situation has continued beyond the fall of the communist regimes in Europe. He proposes a transnational, horizontal history of theEuropean avant-garde that will allow the local narratives to be fully integrated ona pan-European level. Following Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Pietrowski calls
this method ‘geo-history’, which would enable Eastern and Central Europe to beplaced on an equal level. The consequence of Piotrowski’s spatial history is to enable the European margins to be fully integrated into the modernism of the centre.
While Piotrowski’s intervention is of great value, my worry is that simply
bringing the European margins within European modernism will do nothing tocounteract the inherent problem of otherness and the hegemonic canon of marginality and exclusion. His critique is correct but not his solution. His view that
Polish art, for instance, should be included within the mainstream modernism
perpetuates the problem of the centre/periphery imbalance. Rather than aiming
to join the exclusive club – and here I don’t think I want to belong to the club that
doesn’t want me – our objective should be to ‘decentre’ the whole avant-garde
canon, affirming the essential hybrid nature of modernism, which I have called‘decolonising’ modernism. This is the whole exercise of decentring modernism.
So, what is the centre/periphery? And the art historical hierarchy? It is an exclusion, and here I point to my expression ‘Picasso manqué syndrome’ (Mitter 2008)!
Where do we begin with this? You know, centre/periphery goes a long way backin art history – to Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574)!
Vasari’s construction of the periphery in Renaissance art, taking Florence,
Rome, and Venice as the centre, was later to influence the new discipline of art
history and was taken up by Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768). Vasari
told us the rules: order, balance, harmony. Rationality of classical taste. By thattoken, Winckelmann regarded his previous period, Baroque, as decadent, andRococo as frivolous. Perceiving Baroque as decadent had a tremendous impact
on colonial art. Whenever pioneering art historians like James Fergusson (1808–
1886) look at early Buddhist art as perfect, the rest, whatever comes thereafter, iswritten in decay. For him, South Indian temple art was thoroughly decadent andof bad taste. Terrible. Vasari’s principle affected the whole of art history. First,
classical art, and this is what I talked about in Much Maligned Monsters. But wenow also need to think about modernism. The problem is not taste, because modernism challenges or attacks classical art, but the problem is the whole teleology,
the concept of progress. And there, modernism belongs within the original teleological discourse which it couldn’t shake off, even with its radical ideology.
Periphery is not simply a matter of geography, but of art history, and especiallyof race, gender, and lifestyle minorities in Western art. Therefore, in modernOf Centres, Peripheries, Values, and Judgements

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ism, regions outside the West suffer from an automatic time lag and belatedness.
When the great Mexican poet Octavio Paz received the Nobel Prize in 1990, hespoke for everybody outside the centre when he said Mexico didn’t belong tomodernity because it was marginal:
In spite of what my senses told me, the time from over there, belonging tothe others, was the real one, the time of the real present … For us, as Spanish
Americans, the real present was not in our own countries: it was the time
lived by others, by the English, the French and the Germans. It was the timeof New York, Paris, London … I wanted to belong to my time and to mycentury. A little later this obsession became a fixed idea.3
So, in order for changes to happen, we need new works and perhaps new art histories. I hope that our new book 20th Century Indian Art (Mitter, Mukherji, Balaram,2022), which for the first time presents an overarching narrative of a major
non-Western tradition, will present another viewpoint and hopefully fill the lacuna.
SW: So, is there a historic chance to connect with? Can this only be achieved
with a focus on style? Could there be parameters other than stylistic ones? Could
networks, and perhaps horizons (Pietrowski), be a way to decentre hierarchies?
PM: How do we create connections? We are thinking of cross-cultural exchanges
here. Style is a complex issue. Because it assumes genealogy. The famous Harold
Bloom talked about the anxiety of influence and derivation (Bloom 1973). The
notion of style becomes extraneous when talking about non-Western modernist
art; what you are doing is imposing Western stylistic categories and then saying,‘Well, you see, by Picasso’s standards, this artist is simply not good enough’. Thisis a form of colonial subjugation that I refer to in the Picasso manqué syndrome,
saying, ‘if the imitation is too successful, it is tantamount to aping; if, on the other
hand, the imitation is imperfect, it represents a failure of learning’.4 So, you cannever be like Picasso. It will always be manqué, not quite. That has so many ramifications. How do you look at these relationships? Style, and here I am thinkingof Michael Baxandall, who talks about style as a wrong category to understandart (Baxandall, 1985). If we don’t accept style, what else can we use? You mention
networks. That is an interesting idea. As I see it, this means much more looking at different movements, transcultural movements probably. I’ll give you one
example. The Bauhaus and Weimar. How the works of Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Johannes Itten were shown in India in 1922 at the height of modernism(Mitter 2013). Networks have a lot of potential and could bring groups together
who converge on certain dominant interests, though they may also have otherinterests. For instance, the interests of Kandinsky and other Bauhaus artists were
historically different from those of Abanindranath and the Bengal School. But as
the art historian Stella Kramrisch5 observed, they were able to form an informal
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network that challenged the dominant canon of academic naturalism as part ofcolonial/capitalist modernity.
SW: The conference Collecting Asian Art in Prague looked at the global exchangeof art and artefacts and the creative and cultural interchange and encounters
between Asian and Central Eastern European countries, protagonists and locations since the late nineteenth century. It can be said that, until the Second World
War, there was a general interest in Asia, its arts and artefacts, its philosophies,
etc., across European countries. From this, the collecting of artworks and artefacts
developed into a real industry, an activity carried out through certain networks
that often competed with one another throughout Europe.6
After the Second World War, however, the picture changed. Central and Eastern European countries became independently involved in cultural exchange, andjudging from the art collections in Central Europe, there are large accumulationsof art, including modern art, from Asian countries. Moreover, especially during
the communist era, there were numerous and frequent exhibitions of Asian art, as
well as artistic, cultural, and intellectual exchanges. This, of course, requires us tolook at these exchanges through the lens of the Cold War. Let’s take the exampleof India: Indian art exhibitions enjoyed popularity in Europe, the United States,
Japan, and South America throughout the second part of the twentieth century,and the 1990s seemingly intensified this trend, reaching a peak in the first decadeof the twenty-first century. Here, one has to acknowledge India’s political inclination during the bipolar phase of the Cold War as a non-aligned country withfriendly ties and leanings towards the Eastern bloc. Thus, exhibitions of Indianart in the post-war era were quite frequent and common in Central and Eastern
European countries, a fact that is often ignored by accounts surveying Indian exhibition in Europe. How can we give due credit to these exhibitions and collections
beyond simply writing them into the narrative of art history? Or beyond simply
seeing them as having accompanied political and diplomatic networking efforts?
PM: Thanks for the thoughtful question. As it relates to your conference, I thinkthat Asian art collections in Eastern Europe are an important point. First, myknowledge of the field of collecting in Eastern Europe is so limited that myanswers will probably reflect more ignorance than knowledge. But I will try to
make some general points. A massive show in Lugano (2017–2018), The Myth ofIndia in Western Culture 1808–2017, offered a comprehensive portrait of European fascination with India including collections (Schenini 2017). I also attended
a conference on collecting Asian art in America (Global Impact of Asian Aesthetics on American Art and Material Culture, Winterthur, Wilmington, Delaware,
October 10–14, 2018), where Professor Michael Leja and I had a productive conversation in which we exchanged our views on global exchanges in artefacts andideas. Michael focused on material culture and saw these exchanges as part of acommodity exchange across nations as an aspect of capitalist commodification.
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While agreeing with him, I stressed the role of cultural exchanges and dialogic
exchanges across cultures, even though these exchanges were dependent on
power relations. Now, as to the question you ask, my own guess is that representations of Asia in Eastern and Central Europe drew upon what Edward Said calls
Orientalism.7 While these Eastern and Central European regions had a relatively
open attitude towards the East, nonetheless they, too, subscribed to Christian values and classical aesthetics. But there is another history, in other words, that ofcollecting going back to the Kunstkammer era. Did collections in Eastern Europe
form part of that tradition? There were big collectors in the nineteenth century
like Émile Guimet, who plundered Japan and other places to create his museum.
So, Central Eastern Europe perhaps did not follow but shared or accepted Western European ideas.
The situation changed during the Cold War. Russians, Poles, and other Eastern Europeans who weren’t allowed to visit the West found it much easier to visit
India. Also, the Soviets welcomed cultural exchanges with non-aligned India. I
think it was in 1952 that I saw, as a teenager, the massive exhibition of Soviet art
in Calcutta (today’s Kolkata). You know, of course, about the big festivals of peaceand culture organised by the Soviets in the developing world. Even though Indian
artists gained some recognition in the West, they were made more welcome in
Eastern Europe. You know that part of history much better than I do. But in Calcutta, both the KGB and the CIA were courting the Bengali intellectuals. Indian
painters, however, did not like Soviet art. They were really much more drawn toWestern art and formalist modernism. Many Indian modernist artists, and you
know about them and you have written about them, had a place in the West, but
not an essential one. In Eastern Europe, these Indian artists were much morewelcome. They had shows; they were invited. Do you feel that?
SW: Oh yes, absolutely, Partha! And now, just a couple of days ago, I completed
my contribution to this volume on M. F. Husain’s very close ties with Prague andits people, and his works in the National Gallery in Prague. Over his long periodof engagement, he was appreciated in Prague both as an Eastern and as a transnational artist.
PM: That is an important issue. You are absolutely right. The appreciation thatcomes from the margin. So, think about Clement Greenberg, who created thebinary relationship between the free world and the Soviet world.8 According tohim, American abstract expressionists arose to defend aesthetic standards against
what he called kitsch or formulaic art. They were progressive, as opposed to
Soviet art, which degraded culture. But of course – and I learned a lot during mycollaboration for a recent conference in Warsaw9 – art in Eastern Central Europe
was very rich, and many of us don’t know enough about it. This leaves us with twodecentrings, and I am very happy to be part of that.

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SW: And since you are talking about the Warsaw conference, I remember thatAnselm Franke was your respondent, and in a recent publication, he argued aboutbarriers that prevent ‘the situating of artistic modernism within the global history ofcolonial modernity – and [maintained] that this barrier binds the art world and its
institutions to the specific ideological configuration of the post-World War II period
and its economic modernization paradigms’.10 He made this argument in connection
with the question about how to replace Eurocentrism and how to go about this historic chance of revision. About which barrier, he asked, are we talking here? (Franke,
2021, p. 29) This brings me to another question I wanted to ask – namely, is it realistic to think that the writing of a global or world art history is possible?
PM: Your question relates to a long European, especially Central European tradition, going back to the historical writings of the eighteenth century and to Johann
Christoph Gatterer, the pioneer of universal history. In art history, the Germans
Franz Kugler, Wilhelm Lübke, and Carl Schnaase were the leaders, who had aclear narrative structure. However, their aesthetic judgements owed to Vasarian or classical norms of taste. In many ways, Gombrich’s classic story of art ispossibly the last of that great tradition, though he strongly objected to totalisingconcepts in his famous opening statement: ‘there is no such thing as art; there
are only artists’.11 In the late twentieth century, with globalisation, art historians– notably Hans Belting – separate world art from global art, and Belting himself
writes on global art (Belting, 2011).
In the late twentieth century, with globalisation, art historians separated world
art history – such as that of David Carrier, who tried to formulate a world art
history, seeing the problem as one of trying to describe an unfamiliar art fromanother culture. But he didn’t wish to impose a pre-existing schema in describing these different traditions and therefore chose a more modest approach. Hans
Belting has been vocal regarding global art history, which, as he observes, seeksa language to describe transcultural interaction and exchange. Sometimes it isdefined as the history of contemporary non-Western art (Belting), while it seems
to me that world art history is a collection of the histories of different artistic traditions. But I cannot claim to offer any insight on this because these terms are still
evolving, and there are no commonly agreed definitions. Writing this has thus
become a daunting task. But all I can say is that the underlying assumptions of art
history must change, as must the art historical underpinnings which challenge
long-held stereotypes. I have written quite a lot about this, as you know, especially reimagining modernism. But if I may cite 20th Century Indian Art, the way
forward is detailed contextualised regional art histories, for example, of Africa or
Latin America, but bringing out all the nuances of each nation within Africa or
Latin America for instance. Details with a broader perspective should be the aim.
SW: So, are you saying that decolonisation is the key?

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PM: Yes, decolonising writing. Taking apart the basic ideas. It’s a slow process. It’s
not all black and white. It’s about shades of opinion. It is a long learning process– this is what I feel. With lots of voices, it’s a book that can make a difference. Plurality is the ideal and not a monolithic narrative which tends to exclude the marginals both globally and also within a region, minorities such as tribes, LGBTQ+
groups – multivocal.
SW: Partha, while I see your work as having tremendous influence, I feel thatmost of us, including myself, are not engaging thoroughly enough with yourideas, ideas that you yourself have developed.
PM: I feel that the younger generation is very promising. I include you among
them. I am now no longer young, and I hope that the legacy will be of some
importance, and lots of young people, all the way to Brazil, are already responding
to it. But I honestly believe that I haven’t written down anything in stone. I am also
aware that my scholarship is often imperfect or flawed. But what is important is toraise questions – to ask questions. And that is one thing I learned from my teacher
Ernst Gombrich. He also believed that it is more important to ask questions thanto find simple answers. And I am now becoming very aware of the area of Eastern
and Central Europe, and we need to develop more awareness of this region. If
I still have time, I would love to write a sequence on decentring modernism bytaking into account the margins within the centre, which Piotrowski talked about.
But, Simone, my point is that no one has special privileges. So, I wouldn’t privilege
one tradition over the other. It’s a hybrid thing. We are all together. I believe incontext. How do I judge a painter who is modernist? I try to understand what heis doing if he is serious, and then I try to form a judgement. And I find that that
often works. Modernism doesn’t have a single rule, like classical art. But this is
how you can arrive at a judgement of value centred on individual artists withina tradition or movement. And to exercise value judgement is important. Not all
Indian artists were or are equally good.
SW: I reached out to Ebba Koch and asked her if she could reformulate the question that she asked during the Prague conference.12 Here is what Ebba asked in
response to your paper presentation:
In his concluding observations, Partha was arguing not to make the Westour default position. My question goes back to an issue which occupied the
Wiener Schule der Kunstgeschichte in its early days, when the aim was todevelop a globally valid scientific methodology for the investigation of art.
If the art historical method, as developed in German-speaking Europe in
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is a science, should it not beapplicable to art globally?13

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PM: Ebba raises a fundamental question with which I have been struggling
throughout my research career. What I am thinking of is a very difficult issue.
There are those who wish to ignore art historical methods and deny history. But,
by denying this, you reinforce it, and that’s the elephant in the room. Also, in lifenothing is absolute – yes or no, black or white – there are shades of meaning. I
need to explain: Ebba refers to Oleg Grabar’s comment, which is interesting andwith which I am in complete agreement. In short it isn’t wrong to use a method
developed in the European context so long as you are aware that the European
method is also a product of European intellectual and cultural history with all its
baggage. There is no objective truth in the humanities – because values intervene.
Of course there are some objective elements: one can document an artist’s childhood, career, workshop, their relationship, their contemporaries, and the historic
moment during which they worked. One can also describe in detail the subject
matter and iconography of each painting. But is that sufficient? Obviously not.
Most art historians then offer evaluations of these works and offer value judgements. Here the problem starts. How do you do it? Central European Kunstwissenschaft is an effective instrument for studying the objective aspects of a workof art. But when we come to taste and values, how do we avoid Western biases?
I will try to explain with examples from my own career. I owe my work to E. H.
Gombrich, without whom I couldn’t have become an art historian. Even though I
was involved in art as a painter, my discipline was history, not art history. But hewelcomed that and always insisted that he himself was a historian.
His own career is instructive because of his profound questioning of his own
method. His book Art and Illusion is, in my view, his greatest work (Gombrich,1960). It questions the whole European idea that art is natural; he calls it culturally constructed, uses linguistic methods to reinforce his argument, and points
to its limitations. So, that was a revolutionary idea and most postcolonials loved
that initially. But then, being Gombrich, who was always thinking and constantly
evolving his own ideas, his flexibility disappointed the radical scholars. When I met
Gombrich, as an artist and historian, he asked me if I could tell him why he found
the florid Hindu temple sculptures disturbing to his sensibilities? He subsequently
invited me to explore this in my doctoral dissertation. In Much Maligned Monsters:
History of European Reactions to Indian Art, I used his paired categories, schema andcorrection, to investigate the role of stereotypes in Western misrepresentations ofIndian art. I concluded that European misrepresentations, culminating in colonialart history, continued into the twentieth century and have been part of the Westerndismissal of Hindu sculptures as irrational and of bad taste. So, much of what I haveproduced I owe to him, but of course, as you know, my work is very different. He
had little experience with colonialism but he was so open-minded about that.
SW: Partha, in your first book, Much Maligned Monsters, you claimed thatintercultural encounters are subject to misunderstandings. You looked at earlyWestern stereotypes of Indian gods as classical monsters (Partha Mitter, MuchOf Centres, Peripheries, Values, and Judgements

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Maligned Monsters, 10), and you spoke of cultural preconceptions as opposed toknowledge of the other culture, in this case Hinduism. Would you say that thisapplies to the whole of the West, or do we have to make distinctions within what
is generally termed ‘the West’?
I am asking this because you also point out that these misconceptions were inplace despite systematic colonial administrative knowledge production about thecolonised peoples and countries.
So, what I am trying to get at is: would you say that those European countries
that were not directly involved in colonialism – and of course we need to recognise that not exerting direct colonial control did not mean that non-colonial
European countries were not beneficiaries of the colonial system – were perhaps
less judgemental or less prone to false judgement? In the context of this edited
book, the region I am concerned with is Central Eastern Europe.
PM: You have two elements here: within Europe you have many cultural differences, but in relation to the other or non-European cultures, such as Asian,African, or South American, Europe is unified as a block, sort of us versus them.
Yes, previously, ignorance saw monsters when there were actually gods. But, with
objective knowledge, the whole of ancient Indian art was mapped out, and we are
all in the British archaeologists’ debt. But as I argue in chapters IV and V,14 evenwith the expansion of knowledge, the problem of appreciation remained – twocompeting rationalities and aesthetics. Classical taste dominated all studies – sovalue comes into it. As concerns Mughal art I am not sure, but there is the unstatedview that Mughal portraits are not up to European standards. To the Victorianadministrators in India, while miniatures were pleasing and even beautiful, they
were in essence decorative art, and by decorative, they meant ‘two-dimensional’.
This is clear from their next statement: the criteria for high art was naturalism andthe importance of noble ideals, as was the case with the history paintings of Victorian academic art, Alma-Tadema or Lord Leighton, for instance. And I would addthat in Central Europe it was Hans Makart. But the core principle was naturalism
or illusion of the perceptual world. However much they admired non-Westernart, European collectors would never compare a European master with an AbulHasan or Mansur at the Mughal court – I accept that there were probably some
exceptions – so they become the preserve of collectors or connoisseurs.
I agree that within Europe, there are lots of cultural differences, of course.
But when you have these countries facing Africa and Asia, their cultural values
override their keen interest. John Ruskin was deeply impressed with Indian decoration but never compared it with European painting or sculpture, which were on
another level. In Orientalism Edward Said spoke of this collective representationas European self-definition in juxtaposition with the other – the construction of
the rational self as opposed to the Oriental irrational. Thus within a universal
hierarchy, even deep appreciation of a non-Western tradition fell short of comparing it with the highest form of Western art.
214COLLECTING ASIAN ARTNOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.

Terry Smith, ‘The Provincialism Problem’, Artforum XIII, no. 1 (September 1974), 1.
Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Toward a Geography of Art (Chicago and London: University of Chicago
Press, 2004).
Octavio Paz, Nobel Lecture, 8 December 1990. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1990/paz/lecture/ (last visited 26 July 2023).
Partha Mitter, ‘Decentering Modernism: Art History and Avant-Garde Art from the Periphery’, Art
Bulletin, Vol. XC, No. 1, December 2008, 534.
Stella Kramrisch, Catalogue of the 14th Annual Exhibition of the Indian Society of Oriental Art (Calcutta:
December 1922), 3-4.
In his contribution to this edited book, Johannes Wieninger presents some of the most important players and their networks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978).
Clement Greenberg, ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’, Partisan Review, VI, No. 5, Fall 1939, 34-49.
Modernism and its Discontents: Some Reflections on the Vexing Problem of the Centre and the Periphery,
conference, 8 April 2021. https://artmuseum.pl/en/wydarzenia/global-modernism-and-its-discontents
Anselm Franke, ‘A World Frozen in Art‘, in Para Politics: Cultural Freedom and the Cold War, edited byAnselm Franke, Nida Ghouse, Paz Guevara, and Antonia Majaca (Berlin: Haus der Kulturen der Welt
and Sternberg Press, 2021), 29.
E. H. Gombrich, The Story of Art (London: Phaidon Press, 1967), 5.
For more information on the conference, see https://www.ngprague.cz/en/event/3092/collecting-asianart-in-prague-conference.
Personal communication, Ebba Koch, 20 November 2022.
Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 189-251.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baxandall, Michael. Patterns of Intention. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985.
Belting, Hans, and Andrea Buddensieg, eds. The Global Art World. Audiences, Markets, and Museums. Osterfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2009.
Belting, Hans, Jacob Birken, Andrea Buddensieg, and Peter Weibel, eds. Global Studies. Mapping Contemporary
Art and Culture. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2011.
Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.
Franke, Anselm. ‘A World Frozen in Art’. In Para Politics: Cultural Freedom and the Cold War, edited by Anselm
Franke, Nida Ghouse, Paz Guevara, and Antonia Majaca. Berlin: Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Sternberg Press, 2021.
Gombrich, E. H. Art & Illusion. A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. London: Phaidon, 1960.
Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta. Toward a Geography of Art. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press,
2004.
Mitter, Partha, Parul Dave Mukherji, and Rakhee Balaram, eds. 20th Century Indian Art: Modern, Post-Independence, Contemporary. London: Thames & Hudson, 2022.
Mitter, Partha. ‘Das Bauhaus für das 21. Jahrhundert’. In Bauhaus News: Stimmen zur Gegenwart, edited by
Franziska Eidner, Laura Raber, and Regina Bittner, 47–48. Dessau: Specter Books, 2015.
Mitter, Partha. ‘Modernity, Art, and National Identity in India: Background to the Bauhaus Exhibition in Calcutta, 1922’. In The Bauhaus in Calcutta, edited by Regina Bittner and Kathrin Rhomberg, 85–92. Dessau: Hatje Cantz Bauhaus Edition 36, 2013.
Mitter, Partha. ‘Decentering Modernism: Art History and Avant-Garde Art from the Periphery’. The Art Bulletin 90, no. 4 (December 2008): 531–548.
Mitter, Partha. The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1922–1947. London: Reaktion,
2007.
Mitter, Partha. Art and Nationalism in Colonial India 1850–1922. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994.
Mitter, Partha. Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977, Chicago University Press 1992, Oxford University Press Delhi, 2013.

Of Centres, Peripheries, Values, and Judgements

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Schenini, Elio, ed. On the Paths of Enlightenment: The Myth of India in Western Culture. Lugano: Masi & Skira,2018.
Smith, Terry. ‘The Provincialism Problem’. Artforum XIII, no. 1 (September 1974): 54–59.
Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori [Lives of the Most Eminent Architects,
Painters, and Sculptors]. Florence: Heirs of Filippo da Giunti, 1550 and 1668.

216

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

BIOGRAPHIES OF THE AUTHORSMarkéta Hánová is head of the Collection of Asian Art of the National Gallery in
Prague since 2012. She received an MA (2001) in Japanese studies at the Charles
University in Prague and a PhD in art history (2008) from Charles University
in Prague. Her research interest focuses on Japanese prints and paintings, Buddhist art, Japonisme, history of collecting and provenance research of Asian art.
She is the author of Japanese Visions of Landscape (2009), Japonisme in Czech Art(2014), Japanese Woodblock Prints and Their Collectors in the Czech Lands (2019),
and co-editor and co-curator of The Buddha Up Close (2021) and Zenga: Japanese
Zen Paintings from the Kaeru-An Collection (2022).
Yuka Kadoi, PhD, is an art historian and art historiographer, with particularexpertise in the mobility of artefacts, history of collecting and critical museology.
Currently directing an FWF-sponsored project, Persica Centropa: Cosmopolitan
Artefacts and Artifices in the Age of Crises (1900-1950), at the Faculty of Historicaland Cultural Studies, Department of Art History, University of Vienna, she isresearching extensively on various aspects of Persian art in global contexts. She is
the author of Islamic Chinoiserie (EUP, 2009/2018) and the editor/co-editor of six
volumes and three special issues of peer-reviewed journals, along with more thansixty articles in scholarly journals and edited volumes.
Zdenka Klimtová studied Indology at the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University, Prague. Untill 2023 she worked as a curator of South and Southeast Asian
Art in the Collection of Asian Art of the National Gallery in Prague (NGP), also
working closely with Asian textiles. She has curated numerous exhibitions suchas Příběhy ptačího koberce (Tales of the bird carpet) in 2017 at the NGP and has
published extensively, for example Kavkazské koberce /Caucasian Rugs (2006).
Agnieszka Kluczewska-Wójcik is vice president of the Polish Institute of WorldArt Studies in Warsaw, scientific editor of the ‘Corpus of Feliks Jasieński’s donation at the National Museum in Kraków’ (2014, 2016), and a member of the editorial board of ‘Henryk Siemiradzki. Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings’ (2021).
Since her PhD in art history at the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne her
research has investigated the politics of collecting and cultural transfers both on
the East-West and North-South axes.

Biographies of the Authors

217

Partha Mitter, Professor Emeritus, University of Sussex and Adjunct Research
Professor, Carleton University, Canada, has held fellowships at Cambridge, theInstitute for Advanced Study, Princeton, the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., and CASVA, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. He was Radhakrishnan Memorial Lecturer at All
Souls College, Oxford. His most recent work is 20th Century Indian Art: Modern,
Post-Independence, Contemporary, which he co-edited together with Parul Dave
Mukherji and Rakhee Balaram (London: Thames and Hudson, 2022).
Michaela Pejčochová received her PhD in Chinese studies from the Charles
University in Prague and works as curator of the Chinese art collections at the
National Gallery in Prague. She specialises in the history and theory of Chinese
art and the research of Asian art collections in the West. In 2019, she publishedthe Emissary from the Far East, a study about Vojtěch Chytil and the collection of
Asian art he had once brought to Europe.
Uta Rahman-Steinert studied Sinology and Art History at the Humboldt University of Berlin, followed by studies of Chinese Art History at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. In 1987, she became curator at the Ostasiatische
Sammlung (East Asian Collection), Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (East). Since
the merger of the Berlin Museums in 1992, she is curator at the Museum für
Asiatische Kunst (Museum of Asian Art; renamed Museum of East Asian Art in2006). She curated numerous exhibitions that involved contemporary artists.
Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik, PhD, is Professor of East Asian Art History andHistory at the Department of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. Her research areas include East Asian material culture and collecting history, East Asian cultural heritage in Slovenia, traditional Chinese art and Chinese
funerary art. She leads two projects funded by the Slovenian Research Agency on
East Asian collections in Slovenia. She was also President of the European Association for Asian Art and Archaeology (EAAA) from 2013 to 2023.
Iván Szántó is Chair of the Department of Iranian Studies of the Eötvös Loránd
University (ELTE), Budapest, Hungary. Between 2010 and 2017 he was leader of a
project at the Institute of Iranian Studies, Vienna, Austria, aiming to contextualise
Islamic, chiefly Persian, art objects in Central Europe. In 2018 he was scholar
in residence at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. His research interest covers diverse aspects of Iranian art history in the Islamic period, as well asinteractions of the arts of Iran with neighboring regions. His latest edited bookis Spaces and Frontiers of Islamic Art and Archaeology (Wiesbaden, 2023).

218

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Johannes Wieninger studied art history and archaeology at the University of
Vienna. From 1982 until 2019 he was curator of the Asia Collection and a member of the research staff at the MAK, Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna. Wieninger
curated numerous exhibitions and was responsible for the installation of the permanent gallery of East Asia at the MAK in 1993 and 2014. He was a guest curator at the Museum of Western Art in Tokyo and at the Tokyo National Museum
between 1990 and 1991. His publications include KUNIYOSHI + Design undEntertainment im japanischen Farbholzschnitt, Verlag für moderne Kunst, Wien
2019, which he edited together with Mio Wakita-Elis.
Simone Wille is an art historian whose research and teaching focuses on art froma global and transnational perspective. She currently directs the research project South Asia in Central Europe: The Mobility of Artists and Art Works between
1947 and 1989 (FWF funded), at the University of Innsbruck. Her writings havefocused on modernism and contemporary art of South and West Asia and theirtransnational and transregional connections. Publications include Modern Art inPakistan. History, Tradition, Place (2015), and the co-edited volume André Lhoteand His International Students (2020).
Tomáš Winter, PhD, is director of the Institute of Art History of the Czech
Academy of Sciences. He focuses on the history of Czech and international artof the 19th and 20th centuries and on the relationship between European andnon-European art and the questions of caricature and folk art. He has authoreddozens of journal articles, monographs in both Czech and other languages. His
most recent projects are an exhibition and monograph of the Czech traveler Emil
Holub (2023) and the exhibition and book Then I Saw a New Heaven and a New
Earth … The Apocalypse and Art in the Czech Lands (2023).

Biographies of the Authors

219

INDEX
Page numbers in bold refer to illustrations.

Abusch, Alexander, 136
Académie Colarossi (Paris), 91
Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design (Prague),
163
Academy of Fine Arts (Prague), 73, 114, 119, 164
African art, 48, 54, 63, 64
Ahmadiyya movement, 148–149
Air India office (Prague), 163
Aix-en-Provence, 93
Alcock, Rutherford, 97
Aleksander Krywult’s salon (Warsaw), 85
Alley, Rewi, 137
Alma-Tadema, Lawrence, 214alphabets, Devanagari, 179
American art, 34–35, 210
anti-imperialism, 145
Appadurai, Arjun, 191
applied art. see under specific objects and museums
Arab conquest, 146–147
architecture, 45, 46, 84, 84, 230
archiving. see VAZ databaseart / art works
authenticity in, 50
concept of, 35
confiscations of, 15, 68–69, 137, 199
global, 10, 22, 50, 54, 211, 212looted, 19, 129
modernisation in, 33–34, 35
monumentality in, 51
movements in. see under specific movements
originality in, 50
quality in, 50
socialist, 142, 173
Sovietisation of, 142
spatiality in, 51
transcontinental movements in, 97. see also networks

Index

Western vs. Asian art, 49–50. see also art history
Art and Art Industry in Japan (exhibition; Prague,1943), 67, 68, 68
Art and Illusion (Gombrich), 213
Art and Nationalism in Colonial India. 1850–1922(Mitter), 205
art dealers / dealerships
in Berlin, 98, 102, 104. see also under specific art dealers / dealerships
Art East/Central (magazine), 11
art history
centre / periphery problem in, 206–208
decolonisation and, 211–212
dichotomisation in, 38
methodology of Hájek, 73
scientific methodology and, 212–213
Western biases in, 207–208, 211, 213–214
world vs. global, 211ľart nègre, 53
The Art of Four Continents from Czech Collections of
Non-European Art (Hájek), 73–74
Art Salon Ernst Arnold (Dresden), 105
Art Since 1900 (Foster a.o.), 205–206
Art Splendour Society (Yiguang she), 116
Arts and Crafts movement, 35
Arya Maitreya Mandala order, 142
Asian artarchiving of. see VAZ databasecollections of. see collections of Asian art
in Czechoslovakia. see Czechoslovakia
exhibitions in. see under specific exhibitions
Group of Fine Artists on, 50–53
influence on Western culture, 12
vs. Middle Eastern art, 34
Russian avant-garde approach to, 49–50
vs. Western art, 49–50

221

. see also Chinese art / artists; East Asian art;
Indian art / artists; Japanese art
Asian art collectorsof Chinese art. see under Chinese art / artistsof Japanese art. see under Japanese art. see also Hloucha, Joe; Martínek, Josef
Asia-Pacific Peace Conference (1952), 172
Atheism, 142
auction catalogues, 17, 85, 104. see also catalogues / booklets of exhibitions
Ausstellung Chinesischer Maler der Jetztzeit (exhibition; Berlin, 1930), 120, 122
Ausstellung Japanischer Holzschnitte (exhibition;
Dresden, 1895), 105
Australian art, 206
Austrian Museum of Art and Industry (Vienna). seeMuseum of Applied Arts (Vienna)
authenticity, 50
avant-garde art, 14–15, 205–206, 207. see also modernism / modernist art
Aztec art, 53
Baelz, Erwin, 102
Baktay, Ervin, 142, 143
Bandung Declaration (1955), 145‘Bankoku Zenzu’ (‘Universal Map’), 31–32, 32, 223
Bardi, Enrico, 98, 102, 105
Baroque art, 207
basmala, 148, 148, 244
batiks, 89
The Bauhaus, 208
Baxandall, Michael, 208
Bean, Susan, 172
Beijing
artists based in, 117–119
Chytil’s stay in, 114–116
exhibitions in, 116
museums in, 116, 123, 131, 135, 136, 137, 241
Skušek’s stay in, 198
Beijing Academy of Arts, 18, 115, 115, 116, 117–119,
122
Beijing Hotel (Beijing), 116
Beiping Art Society (Beiping yishe), 118
Belting, Hans, 205, 211
Beneš, Vincenc, 45, 48, 50–52, 52
Benešov nad Ploučnicí château
fire at, 76, 163
permanent exhibition at, 74–76, 75, 76
Bengal School of Art, 208
Berlin (East & West)222

art dealerships in, 98, 102, 104
East Asian Art Collections in. see East Asian Art
Collections (Berlin)
exhibitions in
Ausstellung Chinesischer Maler der Jetztzeit,
120, 122
Contemporary Painting of China – Guohua
exhibition, 130
Four Thousand Years of Chinese Ceramics
and Porcelain, 131–136, 135
museums inafter 1945, 127–128
Egyptian Museum, 128
Ethnological Museum, 130
Museum Dahlem, 19, 130
Museum of Decorative Arts, 127–128
National Museums, 127, 128
Pergamon Museum. see East Asian Collections (Berlin)
Turfan Collection in, 130
Between the Spider and the Lamp (oil on board;
Husain, 1956), 179
Biegeleben, Rüdiger, 84
Bigelow, William Sturgis, 33bijutsu (concept of art), 35‘Bijutsu Shinsetsu’ (lecture; Fenollosa), 35
Bing, Siegfried, 85, 103, 104–105, 106
Binyon, Laurence, 121
Blaue Reiter group, 53
Blažíček, Oldřich, 73
Bloom, Harold, 208
Bode, Wilhelm, 106
Boháč, Václav, 63
Bolshaya Dmitrovka art salon (Moscow), 53
Bombay Art Society, 172
Bouška, Sigismund, 50
Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901), 19, 129
Braque, Georges, 47, 53, 54
Bratislava, 121, 159, 161
Bratislava 1 (ink-on-paper drawing; Husain, 1976),
179, 180
Bremen, 98
Brinckmann, Justus, 99, 102, 103, 104, 106
Brno, 11, 62, 120
bronzesin general, 48, 53, 130–131
vessels, 67, 131, 133, 195, 227
Die Brücke group, 14, 45–46
Buda Castle (Budapest), 149
Budapest

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

exhibitions in
Chytil’s selling exhibition, 120
Near and Middle Eastern industrial arts
from more recent periods (1955), 146
Oriental Exhibition (1911), 53
Oriental Exhibition (1929). see Oriental
Exhibition (Budapest, 1929)
of Persian paintings (1958), 150
museums / exhibition venues inFerenc Hopp Museum of Asian Art, 119,137, 141, 142
Hungarian National Museum, 146
Institute of Cultural Relations, 150
Museum of Applied Arts, 146, 150
Museum of Ethnography, 146
Budapest Buddhist Mission, 142
Buddhism, 33, 37, 38, 142
Buddhist art, 113, 192, 207
Bulletin of the National Gallery in Prague, 164burial complexes, 101
burial objects, 131, 132
Byzantium, 146Čadík, Jindřich, 73
Cairo, 144, 145
Canterbury Museum (Christchurch), 137Čapek , Josef, 45
Capuchin monastery (Prague), 175, 178
Carniola, 196, 197
Carrier, David, 211
Castle of Siklós, 149
catalogues / booklets of exhibitions
accompanying PCR donation to GDR, 133,
133, 240of Chakravarti’s exhibition (Prague, 1961), 163
of Chytil’s selling exhibition (Prague, 1929),
119–120of Chytil’s selling exhibition (Vienna, 1931), 122of colour reproductions of Persian paintings(Budapest, 1958), 150
of Four Thousand Years of Chinese Ceramics andPorcelain (1959), 133–134
Guide to the Japanese Department of the[Jasieński] Branch of the National Museumin Cracow, 88
of India Exhibition (travelling, 1955-1956),
161, 162of lubki, 53

Index

of Near and Middle Eastern industrial arts from
more recent periods (1955), 146–148, 147,
148, 243, 244
of Oriental Exhibition (Budapest, 1929),
146–148, 147, 148, 243, 244
of Target exhibition (Moscow, 1913), 49–50
of third exhibition of Group of Fine Artists(Prague, 1913 ), 48. see also auction catalogues
Celje Regional Museum, 197, 199
Cendrars, Blaise, 53
Central Europe
collections of Asian art inin general, 9cities of focus, 11. see also under specific cities
countries of origin of, 11
development of, 10
period of focus, 11transregional connections and, 10–12, 13,
15, 18–19, 21–22. see also networks
exhibitions of Asian art in, 209–210. see also under specific exhibitions
on periphery of modernism, 206–208
use of term, 10–11
Central Library (Celje), 197
ceramics
Asian, 90, 198
Chinese, 131, 132, 132, 134, 238, 240
Japanese, 103, 233
Persian, Syrian and Spanish, 147
Cernuschi Museum (Paris), 93
Československý voják (army magazine), 74
Cézanne, Paul, 47
Chagall, Marc, 49
Chakravarti, Ajit, 163, 167
Charles Bridge (Prague), 175, 177, 179
Charles University, 70, 73. see also Oriental Institute
Chehel Sotun Palace (Isfahan), 150
Chen, Banding, 117, 120
Chen, Nian, 113, 121
Chen, Renzhong, 116
Chicago world fair (1893), 103
Chimera (magazine), 85, 86
China
art and artists from. see Chinese art / artists
Opium Wars, 198
practice of tribute gifts, 136

223

. see also People’s Republic of China (PRC)
Chinese art / artists
bronzes. see bronzes
ceramics. see ceramics
collectors ofturn from Japanese to, 18, 106. see also under specific collectors
exhibitions of. see under specific exhibitions
furniture, 198, 198, 248
Group of Fine Artists on, 50–52
ink paintings. see under ink paintings
jade carvings, 132, 133, 239
lacquerware, 133
lidded box, 135, 136, 241
status of female, 117
textiles, 89, 133. see also under specific artists
Chinese Art (exhibition; Prague, 1928), 119
Chinese Art (exhibition; travelling, 1954-55), 16,
70, 71Chinese Maritime Service, 65
Chittaprosad, Bhattacharya, 20–21, 164–165, 165,
246
Chochol, Josef, 45
Christchurch (New Zealand), 137
Chytil, Vojtěch, 115in general, 18
Chinese artists and, 116–117, 122collection of, 69, 113, 117, 118
death of, 121
education of, 114–115
exhibitions of works of, 114, 115–116[selling] exhibitions organised byin general, 113
after his death, 121
attempted expansion to USA, 123–124
in Berlin 1930, 120, 122
in Bratislava in 1935, 121
in Brno and Budapest in 1930, 120
critical responses to, 123–124
in Czechoslovakia 1932-1933, 120–121
in London in 1933-1934, 121partly representing contemporary Chineseart, 122, 124
in Prague in 1928, 119
in Prague in 1929, 119
in Prague in 1930-1931, 120
in Vienna in 1930, 120
in Vienna in 1936, 121, 122
founding of Art Splendour Society, 116224

as legation clerk, 115
marriage to Kokorin, Nina Mihailovna, 116
stays in China, 114–115
teaching posts of, 114, 115, 116
Classic and Contemporary Indian Fine Art (Prague,1956), 73
Cocteau, Jean, 53
Cold War, 11, 16, 19–20, 21, 22, 149, 150, 172, 173,
182–183, 209, 210
Collecting Asian Art in Prague: Cultural Politics andTranscontinental Networks in Twentieth-Century
Central Europe (conference), 12–13, 209, 212
collections of Asian art
in Central Europe. see Central Europe
in museums. see under specific museums
Nazi regime and, 67–68. see also under specific artists
Cologne, 46
colonialism, 72, 107, 191, 206, 214. see also decolonisation
Communist Party (China), 71
Communist Party (Czechoslovakia), 71
Communist Party (India), 164
Confession (film; Hobl), 165
confiscations, 15, 68–69, 137, 199
Contemporary Painting of China – Guohua (exhibition; Berlin), 130
Coomaraswamy, Ananda, 33, 38
copper ewer (Iran), 144, 242
Coudenhove-Kalergi, Count Gerolf, 63
Cracow. see Kraków
crafts, traditional (geijutsu), 35
Csepel Iron Works, 144, 144, 242
Cubism, 14, 45, 50, 51–52
cultural biography, of objects, 191–192
cultural exchange, 209–210
cultural politics, 11, 21, 39, 167
Czapski Palace (Kraków), 89
Czartoryski, Prince Adam Ludwik, 84
Czech Lands. see Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (Prague), 16
Czechoslovakia
Asian art inin general, 61–62
hosting of exhibitions, 62–63. see also under Prague
during Nazi regime, 67–68
communist government of, 68
limited national funds of, 15
PRC art donation to, 136–137

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

trade with East Asia, 62, 63transports of artistic objects, 68
Czechoslovak-Japanese Chamber of Commerce,
62, 63
De, Biren, 164Dębicki, Stanisław, 91, 91, 231‘Decentering Modernism: Art History and AvantGarde Art from the Periphery’ (Mitter), 205
decolonisation, 16, 22, 207, 211–212. see also colonialism
Degas, Edgar, 103
Derain, André, 14, 46, 47, 54
Devanagari alphabets, 179dichotomisation, in art history, 38Diez, Ernst, 18
Diószegi, Vilmos, 143
Directors’ Conference (of National Museums
Berlin), 128
display cases, 75
Dobrovits, Aladár, 150
Dove of Peace (art work; Picasso), 173
Dresden, 98, 102, 105Duff, Roger, 137
East Asian art
biographical approach to, 192
in Slovenia, travellers as collectors of, 190–191,
192, 193, 194, 195–196. see also East Asian Art Collections (Berlin);
East Asian Collections (Slovenia)
East Asian Art Collections (Berlin)in general, 127
Chinese museum experts and, 129
competition with West Berlin, 130Contemporary Painting of China – Guohua
exhibition, 130
educational mission of, 133–134
Four Thousand Years of Chinese Ceramics andPorcelain exhibition, 131–136, 135
paintings by living Chinese artists, 134
Pergamon Museum and, 128–129, 130
PRC, request for loans, 130–131
PRC donation toin general, 19
as basis for permanent display, 134
catalogue accompanying, 133, 133, 240
description of, 131–132
imperial porcelains, 132, 132, 135, 238,
240

Index

jade carvings, 132, 133, 239
lacunae in, 133
lidded box, 135, 136, 241
provenance of, 135–136
requested loans become, 131
textiles, 133preliminary exhibition concept of, 129
rebuilding of, 128–129
during World War II, 128
East Asian Collections in Slovenia: Inclusion of
Slovenia in the Global Exchanges of Objects andIdeas with East Asia (research project; 20182021), 138
East Asian Collections (Slovenia)
in general, 189
database of. see VAZ databaseindividual collections in, 190–191
lacunae in, 195
methods of acquisition
from Karlin collection, 196–197
from missionaries, 196from sailors, soldiers and travellers,
190–191, 192, 193, 195–196
from Skušek collection, 198, 198, 248
from wealthy members of society, 197–198
East Germany. see German Democratic Republic(GDR)
Eastern Europe. see Central Europe
Egyed, Edit, 143–144, 146
Egypt, 144–145
Egyptian art, 53
Egyptian Museum (Berlin), 128
The Eight (Osma group), 45
El Greco, 47
Embankment (oil on canvas; Beneš, 1912), 52
The End of the History of Art (Belting), 205
Ethnological Museum (Berlin), 130
Eurocentrism, 211
European art, 35, 47
Evening (tempura on paper; Gaitonde, 1950s), 163,
245
Exhibition of Art from Outside Europe (Prague,1930), 63, 64
The Exhibition of Old Chinese Art: The Collection of J.
Martínek (Prague, 1930), 66, 66
Exhibition of Peking Artists (Beijing; 1926), 116
exhibitions. see under specific exhibitions andmuseums
Expressionism, 45–46, 210

225

Fajcsák, Györgyi, 137
Farouk I, King of Egypt, 145
Federal Collection Centre (Slovenia), 199
Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), 127
Fehér, Géza, 149
Fehérvári, Géza, 143–144, 143, 146, 148, 149–150
Feigl, Friedrich, 45
Feliks Jasieński Museum (Kraków), 87–88, 88
Felvinczi-Takács, Zoltán, 144, 146
Fenollosa, Ernest, 33, 34–35
Ferenc Hopp Museum of Asian Art (Budapest), 119,137, 141, 142
Fergusson, James, 207
feudalism, 146–147
fictive biographies, 191
Filla, Emil, 45, 46, 48–49, 50
Finsterbusch, Käte, 127–128, 129
First Czechoslovak Republic. see Czechoslovakia
First World War, 106
Fisherman (ink on paper; Qi), 120, 120, 237
Florence, 36
Flowers of the Four Seasons (painting; Kikoku), 88
flows, anthropological concept, 193
folk art, 47, 53
Forman, Bedřich, 74
Forman, Werner, 74
Four Thousand Years of Chinese Ceramics and Porcelain (exhibition; Berlin, 1959), 131–136, 135
Fragner Gallery (Prague), 165, 166, 167, 172, 179,
181
Franke, Anselm, 211
Freer Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), 123
French art, 47, 54
French Indochina, 144
Friesz, Othon, 14, 46
Frýd, Norberd, 74
furniture, 45, 46, 198, 198, 248
Gade, Hari Ambadas, 166–167
Gaitonde, V. S., 163, 245
Gaja Gamini (film; Husain, 2000), 182
Gardner, Isabella Stewart, 38
Gatterer, Christoph, 211
geijutsu (traditional crafts), 35
geo-history, 22, 207
German art, 54
German Democratic Republic (GDR)
donations of art to. see East Asian Art Collections (Berlin)
founding of, 128226

relations with PRC, 19, 128, 129, 136
returning looted art to PRC, 19, 129
Germanus, Gyula, 142–143, 148–149, 150
Germany
expressionism in, 45–46. see also Federal Republic of Germany (FRG);
German Democratic Republic (GDR)
Gerő, Győző, 149
Gerson, Wojciech, 86–87
Gesamtkunstwerk, 75
Ghaffari, Mohammad, 34
Gilbert, William, 84
Glezmer, Stanisław, 84
global art, 10, 22, 50, 54, 211, 212
global history, 11, 13, 15, 16, 22, 211
Global Impact of Asian Aesthetics on American Art
and Material Culture (conference; Wilmington,2018), 209
Gmelin, Leopold, 100
Gočár, Josef, 45, 46
Godard, André, 150
The Goddess Kunti in a Car Drawn by Ten Horses(painting; Husain, 1976), 181
Gogh, Theo van, 92
Gogh, Vincent van, 103
Golestan Palace (Tehran), 150
Goltz, Hans, 53
Gombrich, Ernst, 211, 212, 213
Goncharova, Natalia, 49, 53
Goncourt, Edmond de, 85
Gotha, 129
Gothic art, 50
Gothic Revivalism, 34
Government House (Delhi), 172
Grabar, Oleg, 213
Graphische Sammlung (Prague), 68, 68
Great Exhibition (London, 1851), 192
Greater Poland Museum (Poznań), 90, 91
Greco, El, 47
Greece, 206
Greenberg, Clement, 210
Gris, Juan, 47
Grohman, Henryk, 90, 92
Grosse, Ernst, 106
Grotewohl, Otto, 129
Group of Fine Artists (Skupina výtvarných umělců)in general, 14–15
art as a global phenomenon and, 50, 54
on Asian art, 50–53
and Die Brücke group, 45–46

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Cubism and, 45, 50, 51–52
first exhibition of, 45–46
founding of, 45
fourth exhibition of, 54
influences on, 45, 54
journal published by, 48–49
search for common features in art by, 48–49, 54
second exhibition, 46
third exhibition of, 47–48, 47, 54
Guanyin (ink on paper; Xiao), 117, 234
Guide to the Japanese Department of the [Jasieński]Branch of the National Museum in Cracow(Jasieński), 88
Guimet, Émile, 210
A Gust of Wind (woodcut print; Orlik, 1901), 35,
35, 225
Gutfreund, Otto, 45
Haibutsu Kishaku, 33
Hájek, Lubor, 160, 162
in general, 76, 159
art historical methodology of, 73
at NGPin general, 16, 20, 159
and Indian artists, 159, 161–163, 165–167
inventarisation of art, 70
organisation of exhibits, 70–71, 73, 75
at Nový Orient, 69, 72, 159
relationships ofwith Indian artists, 167, 173, 175with Krása, 165, 167
with Štech, 71, 73
views on Indian art, 161, 166–167
writing of
The Art of Four Continents, 73–74
exhibition catalogues, 163
in New Orient Bimonthly, 76
in Nový Orient, 69, 72, 161
in other journals and magazines, 74
Hajj, 142
Hallerstein, Ferdinand Augustin, 190, 193
Hamburg, 99, 102, 103, 104
Han dynasty, 131, 132
Hangzhou, 122
Hankou (now Wuhan), 114
Hánová, Markéta, 13, 15, 16, 61–77, 217
Hara, Shinkichi, 99, 104–105
Hasan, Zaki Muhammad, 145, 149
Hayashi, Tadamasa, 99, 103–104, 105, 106
Heckel, Erich, 46
Hetényi, Ernő, 142

Index

Heydt, Baron Eduard von der, 65
Hikmet, Nazim, 142
Hilský, Václav, 74
Hinduism, 213–214
Hloucha, Joe, 63, 65, 68, 69, 73, 74
Hněvkovský, Jaroslav, 177, 179
Hobl, Pavel, 165
Hoffmeister, Adolf, 74
Hokusai, Katsushika, 73, 85, 89, 90, 92, 105
Hokusai and His School (exhibition: Prague, 1954),
73
Hollar Hall (Prague), 164
Horáková, Květa, 75
Hortensia (ink on silk: Lou, 1931), 118, 235
Hrdlička, Alex, 123
Hrdlička, Zdeněk, 159
Hu, Peiheng, 121
Huang, Huilan, 116
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 146
Hungarian National Museum (Budapest), 146
Hungarian PEN Club, 148
Hungarian Working People’s Party, 142, 146
Hungary
anti-imperialism in, 145
Egypt and, 144
foreign relations of, 143
Islamic art in, 19–20, 147–150
museums after 1945, 141–142
Ottoman heritage of, 149–150
PRC art donation to, 137religious freedom in, 142
scrap metal imports into, 144, 145
state registration of art in, 141–142
Yugoslavia and, 149
Husain, Maqbool Fida, 166in general, 171, 182–183, 210
art works of
Bratislava 1, 179, 180
cinematic diary 1976, 181
East and West in, 181
Gaja Gamini, 182
The Goddess Kunti in a Car Drawn by Ten
Horses, 181
live drawing performance, 165, 166, 167,
172, 179, 181
Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities, 171, 172,
175, 181, 182
Praha title page, 174, 175, 181
Praha 1, 175, 176
Praha 3, 175, 177, 179

227

Praha 5, 177, 178
Praha 6, 177, 179
Praha 17, 175
Praha 18, 175
Between the Spider and the Lamp, 179
Through the Eyes of a Painter, 182
transformative strategies in, 175, 177, 179
exhibitions ofat Fragner Gallery, 165, 166, 167, 172,
179, 181
at Mánes Exhibition Hall, 163, 171, 173
life ofexperiences of other art, 172–173
and Progressive Artists Group, 172
Rockefeller Fellowship, 173
travels of. see travels (below)
relationships ofwith Hájek, 173, 175with Krása, 173, 175with Žurková, 173, 175, 177
travels ofin general, 171–172
across Czechoslovakia, 171, 175
artist’s book of, 171
to Prague, 21, 163, 165, 171, 173
mention of, 167
Husain, Owais, 182
Hyderabad, 181
Ibn Saud, King of Saudi Arabia, 142
The Ideals of the East: With Special Reference to the
Art of Japan (Okakura)in general, 13–14
on genesis of Japanese art, 37
impact of, 31
introductory text to, 37
originality of, 37–38
periodisation in, 38translated into Japanese, 36
Victorian book design of, 36–37, 37, 226
written in English, 36
Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Art andIndustry (Vienna). see Museum of Applied Arts
(Vienna)
Impressionism, 17, 86–87
India, 171, 208, 210. see also Indian art / artists
India Exhibition (travelling, 1955-1956), 20, 159,
161, 162
Indian art / artists

228

exhibitions of
by Baktay, 142
in Central Europe, 209
by Chittaprosad, 163
in Group of Fine Artist’s third, 48
by Husain, 165–166
by Khanna, 164
popularity of, 209
metal work, 147
NGP acquisitions of, 161, 163, 164, 165
relationships ofwith Hájek, 167
with Indologists, 20
with Krása, 167
study stays of, 20–21, 163–164
welcome in Central Europe, 210Western misrepresentations of, 213–214. see also under specific artists
Indian Sculpture (exhibition; Prague, 1955), 73
ink paintingsin Baelz collection, 102
Chinese, 18, 117, 118, 119, 120, 234, 235, 236,
237
in von Siebold collection, 102
Institute of Cultural Relations (Budapest), 150
International Documentary Film Festival (Leipzig),
165
International Exhibition (London, 1862), 97
International Exhibition of Fine Arts (Shanghai,
1924), 115–116
International Exhibition of Works Made of Precious
Metals and Alloys (Nuremberg, 1885), 100
International Peasant Union (IPU), 145
Iranian Archaeological Institute (Tehran), 150
Isfahan, 150
Islam, 142
Islamic art
in Hungary, 19–20, 147–150
metal work, 144, 147, 242
salvaged from scrapheap, 144
Islamic Review (magazine), 148–149
Isozaki, Arata, 93
Italian art, 36
Itten, Johannes, 208
jade carvings, 132, 133, 239
Jaisalmer, 181–182
Janák, Pavel, 45Japan
art of. see Japanese art

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

culture of, 32
diplomatic missions to, 83–84
Haibutsu Kishaku in, 33
isolation policy, 32
Meiji Restoration, 13–14, 31, 84, 97
promoting export of arts and crafts, 100
self-representation at world fair, 17, 35, 97, 100
textile industries in, 35
Western trade policy with, 107
Japanese artcollectors / collections ofof French artists, 92
in network of enthusiasts. see network ofJapanese art enthusiasts
in Poland. see under Polland
turn to Chinese art, 18, 106. see also under specific collectors
distribution in Europe, 17–18. see also network of Japanese art enthusiasts
Group of Fine Artists on, 50
katagami (Japanese stencils), 102, 102, 105, 233
Nihonga style, 39, 107
obi belts, 89
periodisation of, 38
Polish artists inspired by, 91
shrine fragments, 101, 101, 232
silks and embroderies, 89
tsuba (sword guards), 104–105
Western themes in, 107
woodblock prints. see Japanese woodblock
printsYoga style, 39, 91, 107
Japanese Palais (Dresden), 102
Japanese pavilion (Strugi), 84, 84, 230
Japanese stencils (katagami), 102, 102, 105, 233
Japanese woodblock prints (Ukiyo-e), 68, 228from collection of Bouška, 50
exhibitions of, 105, 120
influence on Impressionism, 17
from Jasieński’s collection, 87, 91–92
masters of, 86–87
Der Japanische Formenschatz (magazine; Brinckmann & Bing), 103
Le japon artistique (magazine; Bing), 103
Japonismein American art, 34–35
in European art
in general, 14, 17, 35, 97
France, 36

Index

Poland, 83, 92
parallel movements in Japan, 107
Jaroslav Fragner Gallery (Prague), 165, 166, 167,
172, 179, 181
Jasieński, Feliks, 83, 230
in general, 16–17
apartment in Kraków of, 87
collection ofaccessibility of, 91
description of, 91–92
donation to National Museum, 87, 89
influence on Polish art of, 92
intention to donate to Zachęta, 83, 87
Japanese woodblock prints in, 87
partial exhibitions of, 88
death of, 89
exhibitions organized by
Kraków, 87, 88–89
Lwów, 87
Warsaw, 83, 84–87
helping friend with their collections, 90
lectures of, 89
responses to criticisms, 87
writings of
Guide to the Japanese Department of the[Jasieński] Branch of the National
Museum in Cracow, 88
Manggha. Promenades à travers le monde,
l’art et les idées, 85, 89
in Monthly Magazine of Literature andArt, 89as music critic, 85. see also National Museum (Kraków)
Jawa motorcycles, 71
Jin, Cheng, 113, 117, 121
J.J. School of Art, 172
Kadoi, Yuka, 13–14, 31–39, 217
Kahnweiler, Daniel-Henry, 46, 47, 54
Kamal-ol-Molk, 34
Kandinsky, Wassily, 208
Kano, Tsunenobu, 101, 232
Karagöz shadow puppetry, 147
Karlin, Alma M., 196–197, 197, 199
katagami (Japanese stencils), 102, 102, 105, 233
Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta, 206
Kavan, Jan, 163
Kazimierz, Prince Witold, 84
Keir Collection (Dallas), 141
Kellenberger, Lubomír, 161, 162229

Khanna, Bishamber, 164, 167
Khullar, Sonal, 172, 181
Khwarazm, 146
Kikoku (disciple of Suzuki), 88
Kinský Palace, 70, 71, 73
Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig, 45–46, 48
Kisling, Moïse, 54
Kitagawa, Utamaro, 89
Kitao, Masanobu, 105
Klee, Paul, 208
Klimt, Gustav, 35
Klimtová, Zdenka, 13, 20–21, 159–167, 217
Klofáč, Václav Jaroslav, 48
Kluczewska-Wójcik, Agnieszka, 16–17, 83–93, 217
Kluge, Maurus, 198
Koch, Ebba, 212–213
Kokka (magazine), 87
Kokorin, Nina Mihailovna, 116, 121
Komzala, František, 161, 162
Kopytoff, Igor, 191
Koršič, Ivan, 199, 199, 249
Kotelawala, John, 145
Kotowski, Damazy, 91, 231
Kraków
exhibitions in
on Japanese art in, 87, 89, 93
Prints Exhibition, 88
Jasieński’s apartment in, 87
museums / exhibition venues inCzapski Palace, 89
Feliks Jasieński Museum, 87–88, 88
Manggha Centre of Japanese Art andTechnology, 93
National Museum. see National Museum(Kraków)Palace of Art, 87, 89
Kraków Society of the Friends of Fine Arts, 87Kramář, Vincenc, 15, 46, 54, 65, 66
Kramrisch, Stella, 208–209
Krása, Miloslav, 165, 167, 173, 175
Krishnan, S. A., 164
Kubary, Jan, 84
Kubišta, Bohumil, 46
Kugler, Franz, 211
Kumar, Ram, 73, 165, 167
Kümmel, Otto, 106
Kunstgewerbemuseum (Berlin; now Gropius Bau),
127–128
Kunstgewerbemuseum (Dresden), 98, 102230

Kunsthandlung Hermann Pächter (formerly Wagner’sche Kunsthandel; Berlin), 98, 104
Kunstwollen (‘a will to art’), 49
Kuroda, Seiki, 91
Kyoto, 93
Kyrgyz yurt, 147
Kyrgyzstan, 142
Kysela, František, 45
lacquerware, 133
Lahoda, Vojtěch, 45, 49
Lalit Kala Akademi (India), 20, 159, 166
Lanckoroński, Count Karol, 84
Landscape with Palace (ink on silk; Li, Zhaodao), 51
Lanscape (ink on paper; Shao, 1928), 118, 236
Larionov, Mikhail, 49, 53
lectures, 35, 38, 89
Leighton, Frederic, 214
Leipzig, 98, 165
Leja, Michael, 209
Lejeune, Émile, 54
Leskowicz, Jerzy, 93Lesný, Vincenc, 68–69
Li, Jianchen, 115
Li, Zhaodao, 51
Liberec, 62, 70
libraries, 141, 197
lidded box, 135, 136, 241
Ligeti, Lajos, 146
Lin, Fengmian, 122
Linden-Museum (Stuttgart), 102
Liu, Haisu, 122
Liverpool Museum, 192
Ljubljana, 197–198, 197, 198, 199, 248
The Logic of Rain (exhibition; Dresden, 2014), 102
London world fair (1862), 17, 97
London’s Great Exhibition (1851), 192
looted art, 19, 129
Louvre (Paris), 104
lubki (wood engravings), 53
Lugano, 209
Luo, Baoshen, 117–118, 118, 121, 235
Luo, Shouping, 117–118
Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), 84, 87, 91
Lyon, 35
Lyre and Palette association, 53–54
Mahabharata epic, 177
Makart, Hans, 214
Malevich, Kazimir, 49, 53

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Mánes Exhibition Hall (Prague), 163, 171, 173
Manggha Centre of Japanese Art and Technology(Kraków), 93
Manggha. Promenades à travers le monde, l’art et lesidées (Jasieński), 85, 89
maps, from Meiji era, 31–32, 32, 223
Marc, Franz, 53
Marchand, Suzanne L., 12
Martínek, Josef, 65–67, 66, 67, 69, 227
Masaryk, Tomáš, 62–63, 67
Masaryk University (Brno), 11
Masarykův slovník naučný (Masaryk’s Encyclopaedia), 62
Masterpieces of Chinese Art (permanent exhibition;
Benešov nad Ploučnicí), 74–76, 75, 76
Masterpieces of Indian Art (exhibition; New Delhi,1948), 172
Masterpieces of Japanese Art in Polish Collections(exhibition; Kraków, 2014; Warsaw, 2015), 93
Matějček, Antonín, 45, 73
Matejko, Jan, 86
Matisse, Henri, 54
Mátyás Rákosi Iron- and Metalworks, 144, 144, 242
medievalism, 34
Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities (film; Husain, 2004),
172, 175, 181, 182
Mehoffer, Józef, 91
Meiji era, maps from, 31–32, 32, 223
Melichar, František, 48
Mexico, 208
Middle Eastern art, 33–34
The Mikado (Gilbert & Sullivan; operetta), 84
Mikeš, Adolf, 48
Ming dynasty, 132, 192
Ministry of Education and National Enlightenment(MŠANO; Czechoslovakia), 65, 73
Ministry of Education, Science and Culture (Czechoslovakia), 15, 68, 159, 163, 171
Mirror of the New Beauty Contest of the Courtesans
by Yoshiwara and Their Calligraphy (woodblock
printed book; Kitao), 105
missionaries, 196
Mitter, Partha
in general, 22
in conversation with Wille, 205–214
résumé, 218
writing of
20th Century Indian Art (a.o), 208
Art and Nationalism in Colonial India.
1850–1922, 205

Index

‘Decentering Modernism: Art History and
Avant-Garde Art from the Periphery,’205
Much Maligned Monsters: History ofEuropean Reactions to Indian Art, 205,
207, 213–214
mobility, of cultural objects, 191
Modern Indian Art (travelling exhibition; 1979), 166‘Modern Problems in Painting’ lecture (Okakura), 38
modernism / modernist art
in general, 12
centre/periphery problem in, 206–208
in India, 171
judging of, 212
networks and, 208–209
style in non-Western, 208. see also avant-garde art
Modernism and its Discontents: Some Reflections on
the Vexing Problem of the Centre and the Periphery (conference; Warsaw, 2021), 210–211
Modigliani, Amedeo, 54
Mohamed, Khalid, 175, 177
Monet, Claude, 92, 103
Monthly Magazine of Literature and Art, 89
Moravian Industrial Museum (Brno), 62
Morris, William, 37
Mosaddegh, Mohammed, 145
Moscow, 49–50, 53
Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, 53
Motokov company, 71
MŠANO (Ministry of Education and National
Enlightenment), 65, 73
Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Mitter), 205, 207, 213–214
Mueller, Maria, 45
Mueller, Otto, 45–46
Mughal art, 214
Munch, Edvard, 54
Munich, 53
Munich School of Applied Arts, 100
Murray, John, 31, 37, 226
Museo d’arte orientale (Venice), 102, 105Museum Dahlem (Berlin), 19, 130
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Hamburg), 233
Museum für Völkerkunde (Hamburg), 99
Museum für Völkerkunde (later Weltmuseum Wien;
Vienna), 101
Museum of Applied Arts (Budapest), 146, 150
Museum of Applied Arts (Prague), 62

231

Museum of Applied Arts (Vienna; now MAK)
Arnold Salon guest exhibition at, 105
art in collection of, 101, 102, 232, 233
as example, 62
Hokusai exhibition at, 105
Siebold collection at, 104–105
tsuba in collection of, 104–105
Museum of Arab Antiquities (Cairo), 145
Museum of Art and Industry (Vienna). see Museumof Applied Arts (Vienna)
Museum of Arts and Crafts (Hamburg), 102, 103,
103, 104, 106
Museum of Decorative Arts (Berlin; now Gropius
Bau), 127–128
Museum of Decorative Arts (Prague), 67, 68, 69, 92
Museum of Ethnography (Budapest), 146
Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), 33, 123
Museum of Islamic Art (Cairo), 145
Museum of Recent History (Celje), 197
Museum Rietberg (Zurich), 65
Musil, Alois, 62
Mustafa, Muhammad, 145
The Myth of India in Western Culture 1808–2017(exhibition; Lugano, 2017-2018), 209
Nagy, Ferenc, 145
Nantian huashe (Southern Field Painting Society),
118
Náprstek Museum (Prague), 61, 63, 64, 68, 69, 71
National Academy of Art (India), 159
National and University Library (Ljubljana), 197,
197
National Cultural Commission (Czechoslovakia), 68
National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi), 166
National Gallery (Prague; NGP)
in general, 13, 210
acquisition of Asian art
art transferred to, 70
from Chakravarti’s exhibition, 163
Chytil’s collection and, 69, 114, 117, 119,121
confiscated works, 69
by De, Biren, 164
Hloucha’s collection and, 65, 69
by Husain, 165, 171, 175, 183
from India Exhibition, 161, 163
from Khanna’s exhibition, 164
Kramář’s collection and, 63, 65
Martínek’s collection and, 66–67, 67, 69,
227

232

from PRC donation, 136–137
Collection of Modern Art at, 74
Collection of Oriental Art at
in general, 15
assessment of, 69
Chinese ink paintings at, 18
inventarisation of warehouse deposits, 70
proposal of transfer to Náprstek Museum,
68–69
Department of Oriental Art
acquisition policy of, 61, 161, 163
founding of, 16, 61, 69
head of. see Hájek, Lubor
Hloucha’s role at, 69, 73
passive approach of ministry towards, 72
exhibitions of Asian art ofChinese Art, 16Classic and Contemporary Indian Fine
Art, 73in collaboration with others, 20, 71, 73, 159
India Exhibition, 20, 159, 162
Indian Sculpture, 73
Masterpieces of Chinese Art, 74–75, 76
National Masaryk Fund, 67
National Museum (Kraków)
art in collection of, 83, 230
donations toof Jasieński, 17, 87, 89
of Mehoffer, 91
exhibitions of Japanese art in, 89
Feliks Jasieński Department at, 90, 92, 93
Manggha Centre of Japanese Art and Technology and, 93
National Museum of Slovenia (Ljubljana), 197–198,
199
National Museums in Berlin, 127, 128
National Theatre (Prague), 175, 176
Natural History Museum (Vienna), 101
naturalism, 214
Near and Middle Eastern industrial arts from more
recent periods (exhibition; Budapest, 1955),
146–148, 147, 148, 243, 244
Nejedlý, Otakar, 48
Neo-Primitivism, 49–50
neo-tantra, 164
Népszabadság (magazine), 150
network of Japanese art enthusiasts
in general, 17–18, 106–107
collectors
Alcock, 97

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Bardi, 98, 102, 105
Bing, 85, 99, 103, 104–105, 106
Brinckmann, 99, 102, 103, 104, 106
death of several, 105–106
Hara, 99, 104–105
Hayashi, 99, 103–104, 105, 106
Scala, 99, 101, 105
Siebold, Alexander von, 100–101, 102, 106
Siebold, Heinrich von, 98, 100–102, 101,
102, 104–105
end of, 105–106
museums / art dealerships
Art Salon Ernst Arnold (Dresden), 105
Kunstgewerbemuseum (Dresden), 98, 102
Kunsthandlung Hermann Pächter (Berlin),98, 104Übersee Museum (Bremen), 98
networks
of cultural exchange, 209–210
of Japanese art enthusiast. see network ofJapanese art enthusiasts
modernism and, 208–209
New Delhi, 166, 172
New Orient Bimonthly (Nový Orient English
version), 74, 76–77, 165
New York, 53
New Zealand, 137
Nightmare of War, Dream of Peace (mural; Rivera,
1952), 173
Nihonga art style, 39, 107Nobel, Margaret, 37
non-aligned nations / movements, 11, 149, 209, 210
North Bohemian Museum (Liberec), 62, 70
Novotný, Vladimír, 69Nový Orient (New Orient; journal), 16, 69, 72, 165,177Nový Svět (Prague), 175, 178
Nowak, Willy, 45
NPG. see National Gallery (Prague; NGP)
Nuremberg, 100
obi belts, 89
Okakura, Kakuzo, 33, 224in general, 13–14, 31
career of, 33
compared to Morris, 37
education of, 32–33
misspelling of name, 37
travelsin Europe, 35–36

Index

in India, 34
in USA, 34–35
on Western art, 34–36
works ofThe Ideas of the East. see The Ideals of theEast: With Special Reference to the Art
of Japan‘Modern Problems in Painting’ (lecture), 38
Old Town Hall (Prague), 163‘On the Spatial Turn, or Horizontal Art History’(Piotrowski), 206
Opium Wars, 198
Oplt, Miroslav, 74
Orient, use of term, 62, 74‘Oriental’ art, 12‘oriental culture,’ 74
Oriental Exhibition (Budapest, 1911), 53
Oriental Exhibition (Budapest, 1929)
also shown in Castle of Siklós, 149
booklet / catalogue of, 146–148, 147, 148, 243,
244
description of, 147
hidden religious dimension of, 148
opening of, 146
Oriental Institute, 16, 62, 63, 68, 70. see also Nový Orient (New Orient; journal)
Oriental Museum (later Trade Museum; Vienna),
101
Orientalism, 34, 210
Orientalism (Said), 214
originality, 50
Orlik, Emil, 35, 35, 225
Ortiz de Zárate, Manuel, 53, 54
Osma group (The Eight), 45
Osman Hamdi Bey, 34
Ostasiatische Kunstsammlung. see East Asian Art
Collections (Berlin)
Ottoman art, 147
Pablo, Picasso, 173
Pächter, Hermann (Kunsthandlung Hermann
Pächter), 98, 104
Palace Museum (Beijing), 123, 131, 135, 136, 137,
241
Palace of Art (Kraków), 87, 89
Pankiewicz, Józef, 91
Panofsky iconological method, 73
Paris
art schools at, 91
as centre for Japanese art, 103233

exhibitions in, 53–54. see also Paris world fairmuseums in, 93, 104
Okakura’s visit to, 36
Paris world fair (1867), 17, 97
Paris world fair (1889), 103
Paris world fair (1900), 103
Paudrat, Jean-Louis, 53Paz, Octavio, 208
Peace to All Children Around the World ( linocut on
paper; Chittaprosad), 165, 246
Pechstein, Max, 54Pejčochová, Michaela, 18, 113–124, 137, 218
Pekárek, Václav, 72
People’s Republic of China (PRC)
in general, 18
donations of art
in general, 138
to Czechoslovakia, 136–137
to GDR. see under East Asian Art Collections (Berlin)
to Hungary, 137
to New Zealand, 137
founding of, 128
relations with GDR, 19, 128, 129, 136
return of looted art by GDR, 19, 129
struggle for international recognition, 136
Pergamon Museum (Berlin). see East Asian Art
Collections (Berlin)
periodisation, of Japanese art, 38
Persian art, 150
Pesadilla De Guerra, Sueño De Paz (mural; Rivera,
1952), 173
Pešina, Jaroslav, 73
Picasso, Pablo, 14, 46, 47, 53–54, 173‘Picasso manqué syndrome,’ 207, 208
Picture Gallery of the Society of Patriotic Friends ofArt (Prague; precursor of NGP), 63, 65
Piłsudski, Bronisław, 84
Piotrowski, Piotr, 10–11, 15, 22, 206–207, 212
Piran, 199, 199, 249
Polandcollectors of Japanese art inDębicki, 91, 91, 231
Glezmer, 84
Grohman, 90, 92
Jasieński. see Jasieński, FeliksLeskowicz, 93
Mehoffer, 91
Pankiewicz, 91

234

Sapieha, 84, 85
travels in Japan of, 84
Weiss, 91
Wyczółkowski, 83, 90, 91, 230
exhibitions of Japanese art inof Bing, 85
at Feliks Jasieński Department, 90, 92, 93
at Greater Poland Museum, 90
of Grohman, 90
of Jasieński, 83–89
of Leskowicz, 93
Prints Exhibition, 88
of Sapieha, 84, 85
missions to Japan of scholars from, 83–84
Polish Applied Arts Society, 88
Polish sashes, 89
porcelains, Qing dynasty, 132, 132, 238, 240
Portrait of Feliks Jasieński ( Wyczółkowski; pastel on
paper), 83, 230
Portraits of Stanisław Dębicki and Damazy Kotowski(Dębicki & Kotowski), 91, 231
Portugal, 206
postcard collections, 199, 199, 249
Poznań, 90
PragueAir India’s office in, 163
in art of Husain
drawings, 175, 176, 177, 177, 178, 179, 182
Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities, 172, 181,
182
exhibitions in
Art and Art Industry in Japan, 67, 68, 68
Chinese Art, 16, 70, 71
Classic and Contemporary Indian Fine
Art, 73
Exhibition of Art from Outside Europe,
63, 64The Exhibition of Old Chinese Art, 66, 66
of Group of Fine Artists, 14–15
Group of Fine Artists’ first, 45–46
Group of Fine Artists’ second, 46Group of Fine Artists’ third, 47–48, 47, 54
Group of Fine Artists’ fourth, 54
India Exhibition, 20, 159, 161, 162
Indian Sculpture, 73
of Japanese woodblock prints, 50
Unknown Tibet (1955), 71
museums / exhibition venues inHollar Hall, 164

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Jaroslav Fragner Gallery, 165, 166, 167,
172, 179, 181
Mánes Exhibition Hall, 163, 171, 173
Museum of Applied Arts in, 62
Museum of Decorative Arts, 67, 68, 69, 92
Náprstek Museum in, 61, 63, 64, 68, 69, 71
Old Town Hall, 163
Picture Gallery of the Society of Patriotic
Friends of Art, 63, 65
U Řečických Gallery, 165
Waldes Museum, 68
visits of Indian artists to, 20–21, 163–164, 165,
171, 173. see also National Gallery (Prague; NGP)
Prague Academy of Fine Arts, 73, 114, 119, 164
Prague Art Workshops, 46
Prague Castle, 70
Prague Sample Fairs (Pražské vzorkové veletrhy), 62
Praha title page (ink-on-paper drawing; Husain,1976), 174, 175, 181
Praha 1 (ink-on-paper drawing; Husain, 1976), 175,
176
Praha 3 (ink-on-paper drawing; Husain, 1976), 175,
177, 179
Praha 5 (ink-on-paper drawing; Husain, 1976), 177,
178
Praha 6 (ink-on-paper drawing; Husain, 1976), 177,
179
Praha 17 (ink-on-paper drawing; Husain, 1976), 175
Praha 18 (ink-on-paper drawing; Husain, 1976), 175Pražské vzorkové veletrhy (Prague Sample Fairs), 62
PRC. see People’s Republic of China (PRC)
pre-Columbian art, 48
Prints Exhibition (Kraków, 1904), 88
Procházka, Antonín, 45
Progressive Artists Group, 172
propaganda policies, 68, 72
Provincial Museum (Carniola), 196, 197. see also National Museum of Slovenia‘The Provincialism Problem’ (Smith), 206Průšek, Jaroslav, 68–69
Przesmycki, Zenon, 87
Pu, Ru (Xinyu), 122
Pukl, Vladimír, 164
Purkyně Association of Artists, 73

Fisherman, 120, 120, 137
Lake in the Wind, 120
Chytil and, 116
Husain and, 172
teaching posts of, 116
Qing dynasty
furniture, 198, 198, 248
jade carvings, 132, 133, 239
lacquerware, 133
lidded box, 135, 136, 241
porcelains, 132, 132, 135, 238, 240
textiles, 133

Qi, Baishi, 237
art works ofbought by Chytil, 113
exhibitions of, 120, 121

Said, Edward, 13, 210, 214
Sakoku period, 32
Salem, Gamal, 145
Sapieha, Count Paweł, 84, 85

Index

Rahman, Allah Rakha, 182
Rahman-Steinert, Uta, 18–19, 127–138, 218
Rákosi, Mátyás, 143, 149
Ramakrishna-Vivekananada, Sister Nivedita, 37
Rampley, Matthew, 10–11
Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia(1939–1945), 67–68
Rembrandt, Harmenszoon van Rijn, 47
The Rembrandt of the Far East (lecture; Jasieński), 89
Renaissance art, 207
Republic of Slovenia
East Asian collections in. see East Asian collections (Slovenia)
East Asian heritage in, 192–193
Rettinger, Józef, 89
reverse paintings, 53
Rice, David Storm, 149
Riegl, Alois, 12, 49
Rijn, Rembrandt van, 47
Risorgimento period, 36
Rivera, Diego, 173
Rivière, Henri, 92
Rococo art, 207
Rodin, Auguste, 92
Rose Chair, 198, 198, 248
Royal Oriental Academy, 143rugs, 89
Ruskin, John, 214
Russian art, 53. see also Soviet art
Russian deportees, 84
Rykr, Václav, 75

235

Sasanian Empire, 146
Scala, Arthur, 99, 101, 105
Scheppe, Wolfgang, 102
Schmidt-Rottluf, Karl, 46
Schnaase, Carl, 211
Second World War, 121
Segawa, Kikunojo III, 68, 228
Sergej Mašera Maritime Museum (Piran), 199, 199,
249
Shanghai, 115–116
Shao, Xilian, 118, 119, 121, 236
Shen, Yanbing, 136
Sher-Gil, Amrita, 142
Shevchenko, Aleksandr, 49–50
Shinto, 33
Shishi (shrine fragment; Kano), 101, 101, 232
Siberia, 84
Sichuan-Tibet Highway, 71
Siebold, Alexander von, 100–101, 102, 106
Siebold, Heinrich vonin general, 98, 100–101
collection of, 101–102, 101, 102, 104–105
death of, 105
Siebold, Philipp Franz von, 100
Sieroszewski, Wacław, 84
Silovský, Vladimír, 164
Sís, Vladimír, 71
Skupina výtvarných umělců. see Group of Fine
Artists
Skušek, Ivan
collection of, 195, 198, 198, 199, 248
life of, 198–199
Slovene Ethnographic Museum (Ljubljana), 198,
198, 248
Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency, 189
Slovenian travellers
as collectors of East Asian art, 190–191, 192,
193, 194, 195–196
composition of group, 195–196
Smith, Terry, 22, 206
Smithsonian Institution, 123
socialism / socialist rule, 19, 21, 72, 74, 121, 134, 136
socialist art, 142, 173
Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts (Zachęta), 84–85, 87, 90
Society of Polish Artists ‘Sztuka,’ 87
Society of the Friends of Fine Arts, 89Šolc, Václav, 74
Southern Field Painting Society (Nantian huashe),
118

236

Soviet Army’s Trophy Commission, 128
Soviet art, 173, 210. see also Russian art
Soviet Union, 128, 142, 145, 149–150, 210. see also Soviet art
Sovietisation, of art, 142Špála, Václav, 45
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. see National Museums
in Berlin
Stalin, Joseph, 142
State Collection of Old Masters, 63, 65
State Commission on Art Affairs (of GDR), 128
Statuary in Wood by African Savages: The Root ofModern Art (exhibition: New York, 1914), 53
Štech, Václav Vilém, 45, 71, 71, 73, 75, 75
Stein, Lorenz von, 36
Strzygowski, Josef, 12
Stuttgart, 102
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, 13
Suhadolnik, Nataša Vampelj, 21–22, 189–200, 218
Suleyman I, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, 149
Sullivan, Arthur, 84
Sun, Kewu, 118, 119
Sun Yat-sen Pavilion (Beijing), 116
Suzuki, Kiitsu, 88Švabinský, Max, 119Světozor (magazine), 65–66
Svoboda, Bedřich, 73
sword guards (tsuba), 104–105
Syrski, Szymon, 84
Szabad Nép (newspaper), 146
Szántó, Iván, 18, 19–20, 141–150, 218
Szigetvár Castle, 149–150
Tagore, Abanindranath, 208
Tagore, Rabindranath, 31, 148, 166, 177
Tang dynasty, 51, 131, 132, 191
tantric art, 164
Tao Yuanming and His Poem Return to the Fields (inkon paper; Pu, 1929), 122
Target exhibition (Moscow; 1913), 49–50
tea bowls (Black Raku ware), 103, 233
Tehran, 150
Teleki, Count Pál, 143
Ten International Friends of China, 137
textile industries, 35
textiles, 47, 89, 133, 147
Through the Eyes of a Painter (Husain; film, 1967),
182
Tibetan art, 71, 71, 120, 121, 229

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Tito, Josip, 149
Tokugawa Memorial Shrine (Shiba), 101, 232
Tokyo Imperial University, 32–33
Tokyo University of the Arts, 33
Tomeš, Jan Marius, 74
Tong, Deqian (Toung, Dekien), 120
Toshusai, Sharaku, 68, 228
Toung, Dekien (Tong, Deqian), 120
tourists, 66
Trade Fair Palace (Prague), 62, 63, 66
Trade Museum (formerly Oriental Museum;
Vienna), 101, 102, 105transcontinental art movements, 97. see also networks
transculturality, 18, 19, 21, 32, 192, 208transnationality, 37, 173, 210
transregionality / transregional connections, 10–12,
13, 15, 18–19, 21–22, 173. see also networks
Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation (between PRC& GDR), 19
tribute gifts, 136
Tsongkhapa, 71, 229
tsuba (sword guards), 104–105
Turfan Collection (Berlin), 130
Turk, Peter Baptist, 196
20th Century Indian Art (Mitter a.o), 208, 211
Two Dragons Competing for the Jewel (colour on silk;
Yokoyama, 1904), 38–39, 39, 227
U Řečických Gallery (Prague), 165
Uberoi, Patricia, 182
Übersee Museum (Bremen), 98
Uitz, Béla, 142
Ukiyo-e. see Japanese woodblock printsUmělecký měsíčník (Art Monthly; journal), 48–49, 50
Umění čtyř světadílů z českých sbírek mimoevropskéhoumění (Hájek), 73–74Uměni/Art (journal), 206
UNESCO, 150
Unger, Edmund (Ödön) de, 141
Union of Czechoslovak Fine Artists, 159, 161, 164,
165
United States (USA)
art in, 34–35, 210
Chytil’s selling exhibitions in, 123–124
Unity in Islam (exhibition; Cairo), 145‘Universal Map’ (‘Bankoku Zenzu’), 31–32, 32, 223
University of Budapest, 143
University of Ljubljana, 189

Index

Unknown Tibet (exhibition; Prague, 1955), 71
Utagawa, Hiroshige, 89, 92
Utagawa, Kuniyoshi, 86, 89
Utagawa, Wakana, 90
Vámbéry, Ármin, 142, 143
Vaniš, Josef, 71
Vasari, Giorgio, 207, 211
VAZ databasein general, 21–22, 189–190
architectural structure ofin general, 194
typology used in, 194–195
Celje Regional Musuem Asian collection in,
197, 199
Ceramics Collection in, 197–198, 199
Karlin collection in, 196–197, 199
methodological approach toEast Asian heritage and, 192–193
identification of collections, 190–191
main themes, 192
properties of objects, 191
provenance of objects, 192
orphaned objects in, 200
postcard collection in, 199, 199, 249
Skušek collection in, 195, 198, 198, 199, 248
website, 190, 193, 200, 247
Venice, 102
Viennain general, 12
as centre for Japanese art, 100–102
exhibitions in
by Chytil, 120, 121, 122
world fairs. see Vienna world fairmuseums in
Museum für Völkerkunde, 101
Museum of Applied Arts. see Museum of
Applied Arts (Vienna; now MAK)
Museum of Art and Industry, 102
Natural History Museum, 101
Oriental Museum, 101
Trade Museum, 101, 102, 105
Okakura’s visit to, 35–36
Vienna world fair (1873)
influence on Asian art collecting, 61–62, 100Japanese self-representation at, 17, 35, 100
Vinogradov, Nikolai Dmitrievich, 53
Vivekananda, Swami, 37
Vlachou, Foteini, 206
Voigt, Bruno, 128–129, 130–131

237

Völkerkundemuseum (Leipzig), 98
Vosečková, Alena, 177, 181
Výtvarné umění, Tvorba (journal), 74
Wachsmann, František, 48
Wagener, Gottfried, 100
Wagner, R. ( Wagner‘sche Kunsthandlung; later
Hermann Pächter Kunsthandlung), 102, 104
Wajda, Andrzej, 93
Wakai, Kenzaburo, 103
Waldes Museum (Prague), 68
Wang, Meng, 119
Wang, Yi, 129
Wang, Zhenduo, 129
Warsaw
conferences in, 210–211
exhibition on Japanese art in, by Jasieński
in general, 83, 84–85
chronological display of, 85, 86
critics on, 86–87
description of, 86
Jasieński’s responses to criticism, 86
organisation of, 85
exhibitions of Japanese art in, 90, 93
museums / exhibition venues in, 181
Weimar, 208
Weiss, Wojciech, 91
Weltmuseum Wien (formerly Museum für Völkerkunde; Vienna), 101
Werkbund, 46West Germany. see Federal Republic of Germany(FRG)
Wiener Schule der Kunstgeschichte, 212
Wiener Secession (Vienna), 120
Wieninger, Johannes, 15, 17–18, 97–107, 219
Wiet, Gaston, 145

238

Wille, Simone, 9–22, 164, 171–183, 205–214, 219
Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 207
Winter, Tomáš, 14–15, 45–54, 219
Woking Muslim Mission and Literary Trust (UK),
148–149
wooden interiors, 147
world fairs. see under specific world fairs
World Peace Council Award, 165
World War I, 106
World War II, 121
Wu, Changshi, 120
Wuhan (formerly Hankou), 114
Wyczółkowski, Leon, 83, 90, 91, 230
Xiao, Songren, 117, 117, 121, 234
Xiao, Sun, 113, 117, 120, 121
Xu, Beihong, 122, 172
Yiguang she (Art Splendour Society), 116
Yihetuan banners, 129
Yoga art style, 39, 91, 107
Yokoyama, Taikan, 39, 39, 227
Yongle Dadian (Chinese encyclopaedia), 129
Yoshimura, Sentaro, 32, 223
Yugoslavia, 149–150, 191
Yun, Shouping, 118Žába, Zbyněk, 74
Zakopane, 90
Zapałowicz, Hugo, 84
Zbavitel, Dušan, 74
Zitzewitz, Karin, 179‘Život a dílo’ (Life and Work; Filla), 48
Zurich, 65Žurková, Marie, 173, 175, 177, 181

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

GALLERY WITH COLOUR PLATESPlate 1. Sentaro Yoshimura: Bankoku zenzu. Meiji 21 (1888), 43 × 70 cm.
East Asian Library, UC Berkeley (A47). (See fig. 1, p. 32)

GALLERY WITH COLOUR PLATES

241

Plate 2. Kakuzo Okakura in kimono, Boston, 1904. Photographer unknown.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA. (See fig. 2, p. 33)

242

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Plate 3. A Gust of Wind by Emil Orlik. 1901. National Gallery in Prague.
Photograph © National Gallery in Prague 2023.
(See fig. 3, p. 35)

GALLERY WITH COLOUR PLATES

243

Plate 4. The Ideals of the East: with Special Reference to the Art of Japanby Kakasu [sic] Okakura. First edition. London: John Murray, 1903.
(See fig. 4, p. 37)

244

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Plate 5. Two Dragons Competing for the Jewel by Taikan Yokoyama. 1904. Colour on silk, 51.2 × 76 cm.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA (C45). (See fig. 5, p. 39)

Plate 6. Bronze ritual vessel gui, Late Western Zhou dynasty, 9th century BC. Bronze, H. 14 cm, W. 30 cm.
Originally Josef Martínek’s collection, now the National Gallery in Prague, inv. no. Vp 2662.
Photograph © National Gallery in Prague 2023. (See fig. 3, p. 67)

GALLERY WITH COLOUR PLATES

245

Plate 7. Actor Segawa Kikunojo III in the Role of Oshizu, the Wife of Tanabe Bunzo by Toshusai Sharaku,
1794. Woodblock print Nishiki-e, 33.7 × 23.5 cm. Originally from the collection of Wakai Kenzaburo,
T. Straus-Negbaur, E. and F. Portheim, and Graphische Sammlung, now the National Gallery in Prague,
inv. no. Vm 100. Photograph © National Gallery in Prague 2023. (See fig. 5, p. 68)

246

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Plate 8. Tsongkhapa, Tibet, 2nd half of the 19th century. Colours and gold on canvas, 63.5 × 43 cm.
Originally V. V. Štech’s collection, now the National Gallery in Prague, inv. no. Vm 6023.
Photograph © National Gallery in Prague 2023. (See fig. 7, p. 71)

GALLERY WITH COLOUR PLATES

247

Plate 9. Portrait of Feliks Jasieński by Leon Wyczółkowski. 1911. Pastel on paper.
National Museum in Kraków (from Jasieński’s collection). (See fig. 1, p. 83)

Plate 10. Stanislaw Glezmer’s Japanese pavilion, Strugi (near Warsaw), after 1908.
Colour photograph. photo Agnieszka Kluczewska-Wójcik (See fig. 2, p. 84)
248

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Plate 11. Portraits of Stanisław Dębicki and Damazy Kotowski by Stanisław Dębicki and Damazy Kotowski.
1893. Oil on canvas. National Museum in Kraków. (See fig. 4, p. 91)

GALLERY WITH COLOUR PLATES

249

Plate 12. Shishi (Lion) attributed to Kano Tsunenobu (1636–1713). Edo period, ca. 1710. Colour and gold on
wood. Part of a Tokugawa Memorial Shrine in Shiba (Edo/Tokyo). Courtesy of MAK – Museum of Applied Art,
Vienna, inv. no. OR 3930–2. Collection Heinrich von Siebold. (See fig. 2, p. 101)

250

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Plate 13. Katagami. Edo period, nineteenth century. Paper cut-out. Image courtesy of MAK –Museum of
Applied Art, Vienna, inv. no. OR 3925–5692. Collection Heinrich von Siebold. (See fig. 3, p. 102)

Plate 14. Tea bowl, Black Raku ware. Edo period, seventeenth century.
Image courtesy of Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, inv. no. 1901.271.
(See fig. 4, p. 103)

GALLERY WITH COLOUR PLATES

251

Plate 15. Guanyin by Xiao Songren.
1925. Ink and colours on paper,
280 × 100 cm. Originally in Vojtěch
Chytil’s collection, now National
Gallery in Prague, inv. no. Vm 5708.
Photograph © National Gallery in
Prague 2023.
(See fig. 2, p. 117)

252COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Plate 16. Hortensia by Luo Baoshen. 1931. Ink and colours on silk, 33.5 × 44.5 cm.
Originally in Vojtěch Chytil’s collection, later in Vladimír Richter’s collection,
now National Gallery in Prague, inv. no. Vm 6710. Photograph © National Gallery in
Prague 2023. (See fig. 3, p. 118)GALLERY WITH COLOUR PLATES

253

Plate 17. Landscapeby Shao Xilian. 1928.
Ink and colours on
paper, 89 × 39.2 cm.
Originally in Vojtěch
Chytil’s collection,
now National
Gallery in Prague,
inv. No. Vm 5723.
Photograph© National Gallery in
Prague 2023.
(See fig. 4, p. 118)254COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Plate 18. Fisherman by Qi Baishi.
Ink and colours on paper,
141.5 × 49 cm. Originally in Vojtěch
Chytil’s collection, now National Gallery
in Prague, inv. no. Vm 1446. Photograph© National Gallery in Prague 2023.
(See fig. 5, p. 120)GALLERY WITH COLOUR PLATES

255

Plate 19. Selection of Qing dynasty imperial porcelains, donation of the PRC, 1959 © Staatliche Museen
zu Berlin, Museum für Asiatische Kunst, photo: Jörg von Bruchhausen. (See fig. 1, p. 132)

256

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Plate 20. Selection of Qing dynasty
jade carvings, donation of the PRC,
1959 © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Museum für Asiatische Kunst,
photo: Jörg von Bruchhausen.
(See fig. 2, p. 132)GALLERY WITH COLOUR PLATES

257

Plate 21. Chinese catalogue with black-and-white photographs, cover and inside page with
Qing dynasty porcelains. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Asiatische Kunst,
photo (bottom): Claudia Obrocki. (See fig. 3, p. 133)
258

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Plate 22. Lidded box in the form of a peach with inventory labels of the Palace Museum, Beijing, China, Qing
Dynasty (1644–1911), eighteenth century, inv. no. OAS 1959–245 © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum
für Asiatische Kunst, photo: Ricarda Brosch. (See fig. 5, p. 136)GALLERY WITH COLOUR PLATES

259

Plate 23. Copper ewer. Iran, nineteenth century, Gift of the Mátyás Rákosi Iron- and Metalworks. Ferenc
Hopp Museum of Asian Arts, inv. no. 52.60.1. Photograph: Ferenc Balázs. (See fig. 2, p. 144)
260

COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Plate 24. Front cover of Közel- és Középkelet ujabbkori iparművészete, exh. cat..
[Museum of Applied Arts, 1955]. (See fig. 3, p. 147)
GALLERY WITH COLOUR PLATES

261

Plate 25. Detail from Közel- és Középkelet ujabbkori iparművészete, exh. cat..
[Museum of Applied Arts, 1955]. (See fig. 4, p. 148)

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COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Plate 26. Evening by V. S. Gaitonde, probably early 1950s. Tempera on paper, 56 × 43 cm.
National Gallery in Prague, inv. no. Vm 926. Photograph © National Gallery in Prague 2023.
(See fig. 3, p. 163)GALLERY WITH COLOUR PLATES

263

Plate 27. Peace to All Children Around the World by Bhattacharya Chittaprosad, 1952.
Print from the series Without Fairy-Tales, linocut on paper, 30.5 × 29.6 cm. National Gallery in Prague,
inv. no. Vm 2481. Photograph © National Gallery in Prague 2023. (See fig. 4, p. 165)

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COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Plate 28. Screenshot of the VAZ database entry page. https://vazcollections.si/. (See fig. 1, p. 190)

Plate 29. Screenshot of the VAZ database, with a description of individual objects.
https://vazcollections.si/predmeti/kipec-smejocega-se-buda/. (Seee fig. 2, p. 193)

GALLERY WITH COLOUR PLATES

265

Plate 30. Rose Chair (Meiguiyi 玫瑰椅). Early Qing dynasty. Skušek Collection, Slovene Ethnographic
Museum. VAZ database: https://vazcollections.si/predmeti/rozni-stol/. (See fig. 4, p. 198)

266COLLECTING ASIAN ART

Plate 31. ‘Hagoromocho in Yokohama’. Colour postcard. Ivan Koršič’s Postcard Album, Sergej Mašera
Maritime Museum in Piran. VAZ database: https://vazcollections.si/predmeti/razglednica-hagoromochov-yokohami/. (See fig. 5, p. 199)

GALLERY WITH COLOUR PLATES

267